


Secret history (Silver and Kreese weren’t known for their meticulous record keeping)

by kdyelo



Series: Secrets exposed [1]
Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Divorced Daniel, Falling In Love, Fluff and Smut, Idiots in Love, M/M, lawrusso
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:13:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27743542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kdyelo/pseuds/kdyelo
Summary: Many years after the events of Karate Kid 3, Johnny Lawrence has revived and expanded Cobra Kai, starting dojos throughout southern California and reaping the rewards of his success. A chance encounter with Daniel LaRusso uncovers the Cobra Kai story he never knew, and the effect it has had on Daniel’s life.“This dojo is an arena of confined conflict where we confront an opponent who is not an opponent, but rather a partner engaged in helping us understand ourselves more fully.”
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Series: Secrets exposed [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2058060
Comments: 49
Kudos: 188





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> LaRusso isn’t scanning the room anymore. Instead, he’s turned to glare at him face to face. His eyes are black, his jaw clenched; for some reason Johnny can’t imagine, he looks pissed.
> 
> “You revived Cobra Kai? After what Kreese did to you?” he growls. “After what they did to me?”
> 
>  _Oh shit. Is he still mad about his knee?_ “LaRusso, we were just kids. I wasn’t thinking about what we did to your knee, man, I’m sorry.”
> 
> “You think this is about my knee?” he roars. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

#### Thursday

After snoozing his cellphone’s alarm for the fourth or fifth time, he finally forces himself to sit up and hit ‘dismiss’. Squinting blearily at the screen, he sees it’s 1:30 in the afternoon – _fantastic. Another day in paradise._

He pulls on the same comfortable sweatpants and old t-shirt he wore yesterday, stumbles out of the dim master bedroom of his small two-bedroom apartment, and makes his way into the kitchen to load up the coffeemaker and scramble up some eggs with cheese. He eats quickly, rinses his plate off in the sink, and carries his coffee mug with him outside to the mailbox that serves his building.

“Rough night?” Carmen asks him kindly. Shit, he didn’t even notice her standing there. She’s wearing her nurse’s scrubs with her thick, curly hair tied back in a bun; it looks like she’s leaving for her shift at the hospital. Her son, Miguel, isn’t due home from school for another hour.

“Long night,” he affirmed, “and probably a longer one tonight.”

“I don’t know why you put yourself through it,” she chides, shaking her head. “Aren’t you getting a little too old for this?”

The words may be pointed, but he has known Carmen for long enough to know she speaks only out of kindness and concern. “Whatever it takes,” he tells her with a crooked, flirtatious smile, and she rolls her eyes with a little smile of her own. 

He carries his own mail back to his apartment with a mild sense of dread, and deposits the bills into the second bedroom he’s set up as a home office of sorts. “All right,” he sighs, and steels himself. An electric bill, the mortgage statement – he writes the check for the mortgage but sets the electric bill aside for next week. He’s treading water, barely.

Next, the bathroom. He takes a quick shower, brushes his teeth, and inspects himself in the mirror. He thinks he looks younger than his age – other than the laugh lines around his eyes his face is smooth and unlined, and there’s no gray in his thick hair. He runs his hand over two days of stubble and decides he can get away with another no-shave day, telling himself it makes him look distinguished.

After trading the sweats and t-shirt for jeans, a black henley, and his worn black Vans, Daniel LaRusso is ready for yet another evening at the bar.

He parks the Tacoma behind The Boardroom around 4pm and lets himself in with the key. Walking through the kitchen to the little office, he notices the light blinking on the answering machine and knows before he even plays the message that someone’s calling in sick for tonight’s shift. His prediction holds true; it’s his bartender, and since the other bartender quit two weeks ago, Daniel has no backup to call. He himself will have to cover the shift behind the bar tonight to help the new trainee. _Fuck_.

By 6pm the after-work business crowd is rolling in, and he and the newbie bartender, Maria, are slinging craft beers and margaritas as quickly as they can mix and pour. It’s Maria’s second week, she’s still nervous when the bar is swarmed, and she’s a little slow mixing cocktails, but she’s working hard and making progress. “Relax, you’re doing great,” he tells her warmly, “and Thursdays are great nights for tips.” She smiles gratefully.

Around 8, the crowd changes over as the strivers and networkers head home and the more-colorful evening crowd takes over. No band tonight – that’s only for Fridays and Saturdays – but the crowd loves the jukebox and they play the same 20 or so favorites from the 80s and 90s tonight that they play most other nights. The drink orders shift towards domestic beers, screwdrivers and gin-and-tonics.

At 9, he takes a short breather and surveys the rest of the floor. Quickly, he sees a problem – one of his waitresses, Mei, is at the far end of the bar looking rattled. Laura, his most senior waitress, is patting Mei on the back soothingly. Daniel briskly heads their way to see what the problem is.

“Table six is fucking with her,” Laura tells him, rolling her eyes. “The gray-haired guy grabbed her ass hard. Scared her.”

He looks over at table six and sees four men in their shirtsleeves, sport coats hung on the backs of their chairs, probably leftovers from the first wave of after-work customers. They look like they’re having a pretty good time, too good a time if they’re getting grabby. It happens, although rarely, and when it does, it pisses him off. His people are just doing their jobs, trying to make their living – they shouldn’t be subjected to this kind of bullshit at _his_ establishment. “I’ll take care of this right now,” he assures them both.

He squares his shoulders, puts on his game face, and stalks to their table. It’s immediately clear to him all four have had far too much to drink; they’re talking too loud, louder than any of the neighboring tables, and the table itself in a mess. He’ll need to counsel Mei about knowing when to cut these guys off, he thinks as he hones in on the older man with the gray hair. One of the other douchebags spots his approach and nudges gray-hair with his elbow. 

“Excuse me, sir, I need to ask you to leave,” he orders firmly.

“Why?” the guy challenges. “Not doin’ nothing.”

“You touch our staff, you leave,” he responds shortly, with more volume, enough to attract the attention of customers at nearby tables. “Someone can call you an Uber.”

The man stands up unsteadily – he’s taller than Daniel, beefy but not particularly fit – and gives him a little shove. “Fuck off, little man,” he tells him.

That’s the excuse Daniel needs to pin the guy’s arm behind his back, pivot him away from his friends and unceremoniously frog-march him out the front door. He sends the guy the rest of the way to the sidewalk with a little shove of his own; the man stumbles, regains his footing, and flips him off two-handed as he’s walking backwards. “Watch your step,” Daniel counsels lightly. “Asshole.” A spattering of applause from a few of the regulars follows him back into The Boardroom.

Just inside the door, he’s met by the other three men. Two of them look angry, but their body language tells him they’re not prepared to actually do anything about it. The third is staring at him, but it’s not until he speaks – “LaRusso, hey, sorry about that, listen, let me at least close out our tab” – that Daniel recognizes Johnny fucking Lawrence waving his gold card at him like it’s a get-out-of-jail-free card, which, in a manner of speaking, it is.

“Wow.” He’s briefly at a loss for words as he looks his old rival head to toe. “Jesus, Johnny. Look at you.”

Johnny’s standing there with his stylish haircut and tailored sport coat, trendy selvedge jeans and alcohol-flushed cheeks, and he looks good, really good, even though thirty years have passed. He also looks nervous, and Daniel realizes that a few of his regulars, the ones who are becoming friendly with Mei, are staring daggers at Johnny and his two friends. “Come on,” he suggests, “let’s square up over here,” motioning Laura, who’s watching from the far end of the bar, to bring over the check.

“You look, uh, great,” Johnny’s telling him, “has it really been thirty years?”

“It’s been a minute,” he confirms neutrally.

“Here, let me leave a good tip, make this right-“

 _Jesus, he’s the same douchebag he was in high school._ He makes direct eye contact with Johnny’s startlingly blue eyes to emphasize what he’s about to say. “Your friend assaulted a member of our staff. There’s no tip that will make it okay.” He runs his card through the Square on the point-of-sale tablet and hands the tablet to Johnny along with his card. “He’s not welcome back.”

Johnny’s staring at him as if dumbstruck; one of his friends is by his side, yammering at them both: “Come on man, they don’t want our business-“

“Shut it,” Johnny barks at his companion as he clicks the 25% option on the screen. He pockets his card and hands the tablet back to Daniel, searching his eyes.

“Thank you,” he says, and his tone marks the end of the conversation. “Drive safe now.”

Johnny looks back one more time before he leaves. LaRusso is leaned in close to the other waitress, who he realizes really _does_ look upset; her shoulders are hitching as though she’s crying or about to cry, and she’s angrily rubbing her hands at the corners of her eyes. He watches him put an arm around her shoulders and give her an encouraging, almost parental squeeze; she responds with a wobbly little smile.

“Nice going, Lawrence,” he mumbles to himself, feeling like a royal jackass.

...

#### Friday

“Mr Lawrence, the marketing folks are here.”

“Thanks, Marla, please show them in.”

‘The marketing folks’ turn out to be two well-dressed women, one in her thirties and the other a bit older than that. They’re sharp-eyed, serious, and carrying laptops and folios. Although they’re here to make a pitch for his business, and he’s in the power position of interviewing and choosing a marketing firm, he’s still a little intimidated. No matter how adult he looks on the outside, he always feels like a young man just getting started on the inside. He can’t remember how he envisioned his future back when he was a kid; whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t this – a modest but well-decorated office in the corner of a leased floor of a modest but respectable office building near Van Nuys with twenty employees and a receptionist at the front door.

The older one walks him through their proposed marketing plan – tv commercial, internet advertising budget, social media management, clickthrough and conversion rates, SEO strategy – while the younger one illustrates with concept sketches and mocks. It looks good, but then they always do. This is southern California – everyone and their mother is an advertising or marketing executive. He stops them both with a raised hand.

“What makes your firm unique?” he asks. “How are your services different?”

The older woman looks at the younger one who, he belatedly notices, is quite attractive with her direct brown eyes, lithe build, and thick brunette hair. Her blouse is cut into a deep vee; she leans forward in a posture clearly intended to show off her impressive cleavage – Johnny averts his eyes uncomfortably – and murmurs, “we do offer a number of a la carte services to our favorite clients, Mr Lawrence.”

He sees where this is going and decides to cut it off at the pass. This is not at all what he intended when he asked the question, and the idea that this firm thought this was the way to get his attention – well. It feels like an insult.

“All right, thank you for coming in,” he says matter-of-factly as he stands and walks towards his office door. “We’ll let you know what we decide.”

The women look at each other; the older one shrugs minutely and replies, “Thank you for the opportunity to earn your business.”

He gives Marla a look as she meets them to escort them to the elevator; she rolls his eyes, just a little, in response. “I can tell the type as soon as they walk in, Johnny,” she tells him a few minutes later in his office. “It must be an L.A. thing.”

“I need a drink,” he responds with a sigh. He’s been thinking about it all day - the drink or three that will take the edge off, and the amends he intends to make over at The Boardroom after last night’s shitshow.

At 5:15, he pilots his Audi into the bar’s parking lot, noting with some satisfaction he’s beaten the start of the Friday night rush judging by the small number of cars out front. The Boardroom is a freestanding establishment that’s large enough for a band to set up in the back and small enough to still feel intimate. The draft beer selection and consistently-good cocktails have made it something of a local after-work hotspot for the last three or four years, and whoever books their bands has decent taste in local musicians, drawing a strong weekend crowd. It’s a competently-run place, and Johnny is impressed LaRusso seems to be the manager, maybe even the owner. His curiosity is piqued.

When he pushes open the heavy front door, it takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim interior. He doesn’t see LaRusso anywhere, but he does see that waitress from last night – the one his friend groped. He catches her eye and offers a little wave before approaching closer.

She looks at him warily; it’s obvious she remembers him from the night before. “Can I help you? Kitchen opens at six.”

“I wanted to talk with you, actually,” he begins, and she looks surprised. “I apologize for my friend’s behavior last night. He was drunk – that’s not an excuse. He’s an asshole. You looked upset, and, uh, I’m sorry that happened.” He peters out, partially because he’s not sure what else to say, but also because he’s just spotted LaRusso over her shoulder, standing behind the bar and watching the two of them closely.

She’s watching him too, less warily now. She almost looks – friendly? At least not pissed off, and for that, he’s grateful. “Thank you?” she responds. “For the apology. Did you want to sit down at the bar, have a drink?”

He smiles, just a little. “I’d like that. I’m Johnny.”

“Mei. Follow me, Johnny.” She leads him to the bar, almost directly to LaRusso. He thinks she must have given LaRusso some kind of nonverbal all-clear as they approach because he visibly relaxes his shoulders and softens his expression.

He looks great, Johnny thinks, younger than his age though a little rougher around the edges than Johnny would have predicted given how babyfaced he was in high school. He’s wearing some kind of cotton blazer thing over a faded Bob Seger t-shirt, and while he’s not a big guy, he looks fit.

“Listen,” he leads off, “I’m sorry about that bullshit last night. I came in mostly to apologize to Mei, but I’m also sorry you had to get involved. And I didn’t mean to imply that I could buy our way out of it. I don’t want you to think I’m an asshole.”

LaRusso’s dark eyes study his face as he guts his way through his apology; at the end of it, he rewards Johnny with an expression that’s almost, but not quite, a smile. “I appreciate you apologizing to Mei. That meant a lot to her. She’s new, and your friend shook her up pretty good last night.”

Johnny can only look away, embarrassed.

“Enough of that,” and now LaRusso offers him a genuine smile. “What can I get you?”

“Can you make a dirty martini?”

“Can I make a dirty martini, Jesus, Lawrence, you’re at _my_ bar,” and now he’s hearing that New Jersey accent come to the surface.

“Have one with me?”

“Appreciate the offer, but not while I’m on the job,” LaRusso demurs, all business.

Later in the evening, he relents and agrees to have a beer with him after all. Johnny’s on his second martini, pacing himself responsibly in his opinion, when LaRusso leans against the bar next to him with a bottle of Fat Tire. The band has set up and is playing some bluesy stuff the crowd’s pretty into, and the bar and table service seem to be running smoothly. Nevertheless, Johnny notices LaRusso’s eyes scan the room, and he’s shifting, fidgeting, twisting the bottle in his hands. _Christ, he’s wound tight._

“So, what’s the deal here, LaRusso?” he asks. “You own this place?”

“Yeah, I bought it from the last owner when he retired. It’s doing all right, a lot of regulars, decent cash flow. The taxes are eating me alive though.”

“It’s great. I’m impressed. What else have you been up to? Wife? Any kids? I always figured you for a family guy.” Of course he’d noticed LaRusso wasn’t wearing a ring, but that doesn’t mean anything these days.

For a second, LaRusso looks stricken, then the shutters drop on whatever’s going on in his head and he’s expressionless again. “I was married – it didn’t last. Never had kids. You?”

Johnny shrugs. “Nope. Just never met the right person.”

“Well, aren’t we a couple of sad sacks,” LaRusso looks at him and grins that toothy grin, catapulting Johnny right back to high school. “What do you do for a living?”

“Oh man,” Johnny brightens, “you’re going to love this. Do you still do any karate, any martial arts?”

“I dropped that after high school; just didn’t have the time,” LaRusso admits, and once again a little microexpression of disappointment flashes by, almost too quickly for Johnny to catch.

“That’s a shame, you really had a talent for it. So, you won’t believe this. I bought out Cobra Kai from this guy who took it over after Sensei Kreese. He had screwed it all up, gotten the dojo banned from competition in the state of California, lost all of his students, and he was ready to unload it or shut it down. I picked it up for a song just after college, and the rest is history. It took me a couple of years to get the bans lifted and make it viable again, but now, man, we have dojos all over Southern California. You ought to see the kids, they…” Johnny finally registers the fact LaRusso doesn’t share his enthusiasm _at all_. “Dude… what’s wrong?”

LaRusso isn’t scanning the room anymore. Instead, he’s turned to glare at him face to face. His eyes are black, his jaw clenched; for some reason Johnny can’t imagine, he looks _pissed_.

“You revived Cobra Kai? After what Kreese did to you?” he growls. “After what they did to me?”

 _Oh shit. Is he still mad about his knee?_ “LaRusso, we were just kids. I wasn’t thinking about what we did to your knee, man, I’m sorry.”

“You think this is about my _knee_?” he roars. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Johnny feels the shock roll through him. “Why are you so pissed off? I know we were jerks to you in high school, but that was a long time ago.”

Low in his peripheral vision, he sees the other man tighten his fists. 

“Get the fuck out of my bar,” LaRusso demands. His eyes have gone opaque, his face expressionless, and Johnny thinks he looks like a murder about to happen.

“Ok, ok, let me settle up-“

“On the house. Get out.” His voice is flat, without emotion.

At the door, his heart still pounding with adrenaline, Johnny looks back one more time and sees LaRusso is frozen in place, face slack and eyes unfocused.

...

#### Saturday

After Johnny walked out of his bar, Daniel retreated to his little office in the back and suffered through the first panic attack he’s had in years. By the time he’s gathered enough composure to open his door, Laura’s waiting for him. “Daniel, are you all right?” she asked him with a kindness that almost breaks him all over again. She’s been his right hand at the bar almost as long as he’s managed the place, and he trusts her enough to sink into the hug she offers him, though he gives her no explanation.

“Can you cover the rest of tonight?” he asks, almost but not quite suppressing the unsteadiness in his voice.

“I’ve got it,” she assures him. “You’ll be okay?”

“I’m all right,” he confirms with more confidence than he feels. After he drives back to his apartment, he lay awake for hours until he eventually succumbs to a restless sleep.

He wakes up the next morning to his white-walled, beige-carpeted apartment, makes his coffee and scrambles his eggs in the dingy little kitchen like he always does, but his thoughts keep circling back to Johnny gleefully telling him he’s brought his personal nightmare back from the dead. His appetite gone, he rinses most of his breakfast down the disposal.

When he checks his cellphone, he has texts from Laura:

> Hey boss u ok  
> We need more spray cleaner  
> See u tonite?

A trip to Home Depot is as good a destination as any to get his mind off of last night, he supposes.

> Yep, I got it

He’s rolling his cart through the cleaning-supplies aisle, counting out yellow bottles of lysol and selecting a box of microfiber cloths, when he has a sudden impulse to go have a look through the garden section. It’s been years but he still thinks about Miyagi and his little trees sometimes, and he wonders if Home Depot carries them. Then he wonders if he would even be able to keep one alive with the way he lives these days.

As he reaches the far end of an aisle of succulents, he hears a familiar voice and freezes. It’s Johnny, and he’s right on the other side of the aisle, just out of view, talking to someone. He listens:

“-heard you’ve been giving Aisha trouble since she came out,” he chides.

Daniel doesn’t hear a response. Johnny continues a moment later: “If she wanted you to know, she’d tell you. Listen, kid, it’s scary to come out to someone. It’s worse when that person doesn’t keep it in confidence. That hurts. Why would you want to-“ but here, an employee drives by on one of those lift carts, masking the rest. After it passes, he hears Johnny bark, “I don’t tolerate bullies at Cobra Kai. If it happens again, you’re out.” _Beep._

He’s obviously just heard one side of a phone conversation. He’s still wrapping his mind around this, trying to reconcile the Johnny he just heard with his own memories of him when, appallingly, Johnny rolls his shopping cart around the same corner. They are now face to face, and it’s too late for Daniel to plausibly feign innocence – his eavesdropping is as obvious as his nose. He drops his eyes to the contents of Johnny’s cart – a bag of Miracle-gro, mushroom compost, a plastic spray bottle.

Johnny isn’t fooled; his clear-eyed gaze pins Daniel uncomfortably in place.

Daniel’s go-to emotional response these days is anger, but he’s been working on that. He forces himself to breathe deeply, in through his nose and out through his mouth, occupying his hands by twisting them on the handle of his shopping cart. He can’t bring himself to give Johnny right-of-way through the narrow aisle; stubbornly, pathetically, he holds his ground.

Johnny finally sighs. Looking at him a little sadly, he backs up his own cart the way he came. Daniel thinks this should feel like a win, but it really doesn’t. 

He’s distracted all evening at the bar, questioning his assumptions. Today’s Johnny doesn’t sound anything like the Johnny he remembers from the old days. And Cobra Kai doesn’t tolerate bullies? Since when?

By midnight, after he’s uncharacteristically downed a couple of drinks back in the kitchen, he decides to find out for himself.

...

#### Sunday morning

Sundays are Johnny’s favorite day – the one day every week when he gets to spend all afternoon at the dojo with the kids. He teaches two classes, one for ages 6-12, and another, more advanced class for his teenagers.

He usually starts his day at 6am with a brisk morning run on the beach. After he showers in his seaside condo, he fixes himself a healthy breakfast – egg-white omelet with spinach and mushrooms, a bowl of berries and sliced melon, and french-press coffee, black – and watches the surf from his balcony. Sometimes he reads google news or watches the Sunday morning news talk shows; other times, he reads a book until it’s time to drive in to the Reseda dojo.

This morning, though, he’s distracted and irritable, and he just can’t seem to get LaRusso out of his mind. Once they’d gotten past the ugly events between his buddy James and the waitress, he’d thought he and his old rival were getting along pretty well, maybe even getting friendly… but then LaRusso had turned on him. Why? He mentally replays the conversation over and over, worrying at it like a dog with a bone. LaRusso had been angry about something Cobra Kai did to him, but seemed outraged when Johnny suggested it had anything to do with what Bobby and Johnny did to his knee at the ’84 tournament.

On impulse he goes into his home office, opens the bottom drawer of his credenza, and pulls out the files from when he purchased the original Cobra Kai dojo from Terry Silver. Maybe there’s some clue… 

He finally finds the clue he’s looking for. It’s not in the dojo’s records – Silver and Kreese weren’t known for their meticulous record keeping – but in the historical records from the Southern California Karate Commission, where Johnny serves on the board. The records from the mid-eighties are a little thin, but he finds some of the paperwork dating back to the board’s decision to ban Cobra Kai from competition for life. Johnny himself had been away at university in ’85 and ’86, and he had not paid attention to the four-year-old details of the ban when he purchased the defunct dojo in 1990. Now, he learns there were allegations of vandalism and theft from a business in the community, repeated physical abuse of a student, assaults off the mat, even blackmail. Here, he finds a reference to Daniel LaRusso.

He sets this unpleasant discovery aside for further consideration; it’s time to head to the dojo and focus on the newest generation of Cobras.

...

#### Sunday afternoon

The decision Daniel made last night under the influence of a few too many gin-and-tonics feels foolish in the afternoon sunlight, but he’s determined to follow it through. He doesn’t need Google to remind him where the dojo is, but he does intend to remain inconspicuous, so he looks up the class schedule on the internet and chooses the advanced class for his visit.

Once he arrives, it’s more difficult than he expected to actually get out of the truck, and nearly impossible to force himself to push open the dojo’s door. It doesn’t help that they’ve kept the old logo – if anything, with its more modern design and vibrant colors, the flaring cobra is even more garish and jarring to his eyes. The smell of the air that rushes at him through the door brings back sense-memories of Terry Silver dragging out that wooden training dummy; he can feel his hands and shins burning and bleeding as though it happened only yesterday. He takes a deep, steadying breath and forces his feet forward.

Inside, class has already started. There are about twenty students inside, a range of ages from early teens to older high-school-aged kids. He is surprised to see several girls in the group, something the old Cobra Kai never allowed. A young woman of color leads the class in a warmup routine Daniel recognizes from his own training. There is a low set of bleachers along the longest wall to the side of the assembled students. Here, among parents who are watching the class, he should be able to observe without being seen.

His eyes roam the walls, noticing trophies, plaques, and a long row of team photos in series. His eyes slide over the words painted on one wall, then return with startled focus:

> This dojo is an arena of confined conflict where we confront an opponent who is not an opponent, but rather a partner engaged in helping us understand ourselves more fully. 

He blinks, then reads the words on the opposite wall.

> Respect is earned.  
>  Honesty is appreciated.  
>  Trust is gained.  
>  Loyalty is returned. 

While he’s still mulling over the words, Johnny himself enters the training room. Daniel didn’t expect to see Johnny; he assumed there would be hired instructors leading these classes. He’s also trapped. If he stands up now to make his exit, he’s sure to be noticed. If he stays where he is and hunkers down, maybe he can get through this ordeal unseen. He recognizes how ridiculous it is for a grown man to avoid his high-school bully by hiding in said bully’s dojo; nevertheless his heart races and he’s trembling. _It’s just a karate class. I’m surrounded by people. I’m safe. I’m okay._

Johnny looks light, even joyful, completely at home with these students. Daniel watches him pat the young woman gently on the back with the praise, “Nice work, Aisha.” She grins at him in response and takes her place among the others. The routine itself is familiar, as is the attendant ritual and discipline.

One of the parents leans companionably towards Daniel to whisper, “Which one is yours?”

“Oh, I’m not- I was a student here a long time ago. I wanted to see if it still looks the same.”

“That’s awesome!” the man responds. “Isn’t the owner great? Loves the kids. And they love him.”

Daniel hesitates. Watching this class forces him to admit the man is right - Johnny is very much in his element. Although he is brusque and commanding, imposing order and demanding respect much like his own sensei used to, the students are doing well and they’re clearly having a blast. “Yeah, he really is,” he murmurs.

At the end of the class, Daniel sees his opportunity for a clean escape. The family members on the bleachers are gathering their belongings and standing; down on the mat, students are gathered in small groups and chattering happily. Johnny himself chats companionably with a couple of the older boys, describing some move. He stands, steps down to the floor, but when he looks over at Johnny one last time, Johnny spots him. They lock eyes and Daniel freezes in place, mortified.

Johnny hesitates too, but then his face breaks into an open, welcoming smile. He beckons and calls, “LaRusso!”

Daniel bolts for the safety of the Tacoma.

...

#### Sunday evening

When Johnny locked eyes with LaRusso, he was momentarily transfixed, shocked to see him after their baffling Friday night conversation and the awkward encounter at Home Depot. The man was clearly not expecting to see him – his eyes were wide, his face tensed. He looked _afraid_. Something about seeing LaRusso afraid in _his_ dojo invokes his protective instinct; he feels an almost desperate urge to reach out. He’d called out to him – but LaRusso turned white, pivoted on his heel and rushed out through his door. 

Through the window, Johnny watches him get into a little sand-colored pickup truck until Brent places a friendly hand on his arm. “Who was that?” he asked. “He said he used to train here.”

Another piece of the puzzle? “Yeah, we went to high school together. We competed back in the day.”

“Oh, like old rivals?” Brent is clearly intrigued. “Well, he’s cute. You should-“

“Stop trying to set me up, Brent.” Johnny has to chuckle at the idea of him and _LaRusso_ , of all people.

About an hour later, after the equipment has been cleaned and stowed, attendance records caught up and the last student ushered out the door, Johnny walks the seldom-used stairs to the storage loft above his office and drags down the old boxes of memorabilia from the eighties. Buried amongst all the other crap, he finds the plaques and photos from his own wins in ’82 and ’83, and LaRusso’s win in ’84. There’s even a photo of the winning kick showing LaRusso’s foot brutally making contact with Johnny’s face. “That kick was illegal,” he mutters, as he does every time he thinks about ‘84. Then, a surprise: a photo of LaRusso in this very dojo with Terry Silver and a couple of other guys Johnny doesn’t recognize, all wearing the sleeveless Cobra Kai gis. And there’s a clipping from one of the local newspapers highlighting LaRusso’s win in 1985 as an unaffiliated competitor. He looks beat to shit in the photo, unsmiling and alone.

He decides it’s time to get to the bottom of this, once and for all. He tucks a few of the photos and clippings into his hoodie’s pocket and guides his Audi to The Boardroom where, as he hoped, he sees the sand-colored Tacoma.

Laura (he reads on her nametag) intercepts him as soon as he walks through the door. “I don’t know who you are or what you said to Daniel, but he’s been messed up ever since. What do you want with him?”

At 6pm on a sunny Sunday, the bar is nearly empty; he peers past her but doesn’t see LaRusso. “We knew each other a long time ago,” he explains. Thinking quickly, he offers, “I’ll sit in that booth in the corner. Would you tell him I’m here? If he doesn’t want to see me, I’ll leave. Totally up to him. Ok?”

She looks at him skeptically for a long moment, then nods. “Don’t you fuck with him,” she instructs, pointing a long finger at his chest before walking towards the rear of the bar.

He waits for about twenty minutes and is on the verge of giving up when, finally, LaRusso sits down across from him. He wordlessly slides a cloudy martini across the table to Johnny with one hand; in the other, he’s white-knuckling his own glass. He looks a little disheveled, he’s wearing the same long-sleeved black t-shirt and jeans he wore to the dojo earlier that afternoon, and there are dark circles under his eyes.

For a few minutes, both are silent. Then, both attempt to break the ice.  
“What did you think about-“  
“I’m sorry about the-“

Johnny sighs. “I’m not sure where to start.”

“Me either,” LaRusso replies. “Your class – it wasn’t what I expected.”

“It’s different,” Johnny acknowledges. “I made some changes.”

LaRusso is studying him with his depthless brown eyes. Finally, his mouth quirks. “You look good. You still have those golden locks. The kids… they love you.” He looks down at his glass again.

“That’s how it’s supposed to be, isn’t it?” Johnny prompts gently. “It’s not supposed to be a war. I’m sorry about how things were for you.” He focuses on his glass as though the answer to life is inscribed on his olive.

“What do you know about how things were for me.” It’s spoken softly, and not phrased as a question.

Johnny pulls the little selection of photos and clippings from his pocket and places them on the table between them. “I didn’t know,” he says. “I’d like to understand.”

For a long moment, LaRusso doesn’t look at the photos. He’s looking at Johnny’s eyes, his mouth, his throat, and he’s working his jaw like he’s trying to remember how to swallow. Finally, he looks at the photos, reaches out to array them in a neat row with careful hands, and pivots one towards Johnny with two fingers.

“Where are they?” he asks.

“Kreese died of lung cancer a few years back. Terry Silver retired, moved to wherever people like him move when they retire. Brazil? Thailand? Somewhere like that.”

“Mike Barnes?”

“Not sure. He dropped out of the scene after 1995 or so.”

They both take a drink, then LaRusso picks up the article with the photo of him after the ’85 tournament.

“I didn’t know you competed again,” Johnny tells him. “I lost touch after I left for college. If I knew, I would have come to watch.”

“Really?” LaRusso sounds surprised – maybe even a little pleased.

“Really. See if you can win without getting an illegal kick past the judges.”

He cracks a real smile for the first time since Friday, and Johnny thinks _those fucking dimples_. “This tournament was a tough one,” he says, indicating the article. “Mr Miyagi and I had a falling-out when I started training with Terry Silver. We never reconciled afterwards. He didn’t want me to compete, but…” he pauses.

“You were blackmailed into it?” he supplied. When LaRusso looks surprised, he explains, “I looked into some of the history after Friday night.”

“Yeah. I was forced into it. I really don’t want to revisit this, Johnny.”

“We can drop it. I just wanted you to know it’s different now.”

“I can see that.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Yeah, I do. Very much. Can I get you another drink, Johnny? I could use another.”

“I’m in if you’re in.” 

LaRusso waves Laura over. When she gets to their table, Johnny watches her rest a protective hand on his back.

...

#### Monday afternoon

At some point the night before, they’d exchanged cellphone numbers, and around 2pm, Daniel gets a text message.

> John: Want to spar?

The invitation is followed by a time – 5pm – and a Santa Monica address. 

> LaRusso: Ok

It’s a few minutes after five when he arrives in the parking lot of the condominium building and texts

> LaRusso: Here

And a few minutes after that, Johnny meets him at his truck, wearing loose athletic pants and a t-shirt. “I thought maybe the beach,” he suggests, “or there’s a park.”

“The beach,” Daniel confirms. “Johnny, thank you for inviting-.”

“Don’t make it a thing,” Johnny interrupts with a grin and slaps him on the shoulder. “Come this way.” Daniel follows with a grin of his own.

They start with some stretching, then work through their kata, watching each other’s movements with interest. Daniel expected Johnny to have a well-practiced routine, and in that he is not disappointed; as for himself, he’s rediscovering old patterns buried in memory, and exercising some muscles he’d clearly forgotten about since his youth. He’s definitely going to feel this tomorrow. There is overlap between the techniques Miyagi taught and those Kreese and Silver used, but there are more differences; before long, they’re enthusiastically teaching each other new kata and demonstrating different holds and moves on one other.

As he moves his body in the late-afternoon sun, listening to the surf and feeling the sand under his bare feet, Daniel realizes he’s feeling better and having more fun than he has in years. 

“You up for a match?” Johnny offers.

Daniel laughs and shakes his head. “Take it easy on me, it’s been a long time.”

“Don’t be a pussy,” Johnny tells him with grin of his own. They face off, bow, and start.

All things considered, Daniel thinks he does all right. He’s not as fast as he thinks he should be, and his muscle memory is rusty, but he successfully blocks most strikes and he gets a few past Johnny’s defenses. All of his practical experience dealing with belligerents at the bar seems to be paying off. They’re not even trying to keep score so he’s not sure who ‘wins’ these matches, but he’s pleased enough that he’s holding his own.

“Shit,” he finally surrenders, “you’ve worn me out, Lawrence.”

“You’ve still got it,” Johnny compliments him, and Daniel flushes with pleasure. “Do you have to go in tonight?”

Oh, the bar. “It’s my night off, we’re closed Mondays.”

“Want to stick around? I’m cooking.”

“You _cook_ now?” Daniel can’t help himself; he’s legitimately shocked. This is not at all something he’d expect Johnny Lawrence to do. For that matter, neither is extending this invitation. 

“Now? I cooked then,” Johnny retorts. Then, a little under his breath, “I like cooking.”

Is he really gong to accept a dinner invitation from his high-school bully? As he’s thinking about it, Johnny makes one more overture: “Come on, LaRusso, I won’t bite. You might even enjoy it.”

Daniel admits to himself that he really _is_ enjoying this. “All right, Johnny, I’d like that.” They walk companionably across the street, through the building’s lobby, where Daniel is reluctantly impressed by the tastefully modern décor, and ride the elevator together to Johnny’s upper-floor condo.

He’s a little surprised at the place when Johnny lets him in – the condo is large and airy with a wall of windows and a balcony overlooking the ocean. “Karate business must be good,” he comments drily, then glances at Johnny to see if he’s caused offense. It doesn’t look like it – if anything, the other man is looking around at his own space as though seeing it for the first time.

“It’s doing all right,” he says. “The first few years were tough, but we turned it around. Make yourself at home while I change.”

While Johnny changes, Daniel indulges his curiosity. He studies the few photos he sees on the bookshelves, then the books themselves, a dry selection of business- and accounting-related titles. He considers the framed art prints Johnny has chosen for the sage walls – his tastes seem to run to minimalist, monochrome landscapes. Finally he opens the slider and steps onto the balcony where, nestled among several potted plants, he finds a magnificent jade tree, its thick trunk twisted into a shape that reminds him of Miyagi’s bonsai. He sinks into one of the adirondack chairs and presses one of the jade’s thick leaves between two fingers, nostalgia washing over him.

Johnny materializes beside him with a glass of white wine.

...

#### Monday night

“I inherited that from my mom,” he explains when he sees how intently LaRusso is studying the tree. “I’m making dumplings. Do you want to hang out out here?”

“Oh, no,” his guest startles and rises. “Making dumplings? From scratch? I wanna see how you’re gonna do that.” That northeastern speech pattern is back; Johnny takes his enthusiasm as a good sign.

“Well, come on,” he says and hands him the glass.

It doesn’t take long once they’re standing at the kitchen island for LaRusso to want to get hands-on with the dumplings, talking excitedly about the ravioli he and his ma used to make when he was a kid. They’re both loosening up a little with one glass of wine down and another started, and having something to focus on together eases the flow of conversation. Johnny finds he’s enjoying their time together far more than he thought he would. 

“You were intimidating as hell, kicking James out of the bar,” he’s laughing, “you came over all puffed up like, ‘I need ta ask ya ta leave’,” playing up the New Jersey accent in his retelling, and he has LaRusso laughing along with him and making fun of _him_ waving his gold card around, when the thought occurs to him – _this feels like a date. Is this a date?_ When he looks up to meet the other man’s eyes, he notices his cheeks are flushed and his eyes are all crinkly and happy. _Shit, this might be a date._ But he’s never had any indication LaRusso swung that way. For that matter, LaRusso has no reason to think _he_ swings that way. It’s just his imagination running away with him; he decides to set these thoughts aside.

They divvy up the vegetables to slice for the stir-fry, and Johnny hands him one of the knives. As they’re chopping, he notices several deep scars marring the skin from LaRusso’s knuckles to the first joint of each finger. He looks away quickly, but not quickly enough; the other man notices, flinches and starts to withdraw both hands. Johnny can’t help himself – with his free left hand, he catches Daniel’s right and holds it firmly for a moment, feeling one of the scars with his thumb before letting go.

Larusso addresses it directly. “These are from Terry’s training methods,” he says evenly. “But it wasn’t really training. He meant for me to injure myself badly enough that I would lose in competition.”

Johnny waits, certain there’s more.

“My shins and feet are the same. And my arms.” He rubs one forearm with the other hand through his long-sleeved shirt, and Johnny realizes he’s kept his sleeves down the entire time they’ve spent together.

Johnny exhales. “We don’t have to talk about this unless you want to,” he offers.

The response isn’t what he expects. “Kreese tried to kill you in the parking lot that night. How did you get past that?” He’s watching Johnny with open curiosity.

“I saw a therapist,” he admitted. “I had to get my head right before I could return to the dojo and work with students. Then I practiced with another martial artist who helped me work through some issues I had with physical contact. I’ve never told anyone else about that. People don’t understand.” _You understand_ , he thinks and doesn’t say.

“I understand,” LaRusso tells him, and that sends a little shiver through him.

“Shall we?” Johnny suggests, gesturing back at the vegetables with his knife.

After dinner, they sit together on the balcony and watch the last of the sunset. Johnny is having a third glass of wine; LaRusso demurs so that he can drive home.

“This has been fun,” LaRusso tells him. “It’s been really nice to catch up.”

“Me too,” Johnny agrees. They’ve caught up on the latest news about their handful of common acquaintances, including Ali, who, Johnny knows, is a surgeon, divorced and living in Seattle. (“You ever try to reconnect?” LaRusso asked him with carefully casual interest. “Not my type these days,” Johnny replied simply. “Me either,” his guest chuckled, and there might have been a message there for him, he’s not sure.)

“Think you might want to get together again sometime?” LaRusso asks him, looking at him with a vulnerable curiosity.

“I’d like that,” he replies, and he can’t hold back a smile that feels just a little goofy.

“It’s a date,” LaRusso replies warmly, and now Johnny’s definitely picking up on an undercurrent, a spark of interest. He’s pretty sure Daniel is _flirting_ with him.

...

#### Tuesday

Daniel texts Johnny a ridiculous t-rex meme.

Johnny has read somewhere about playing ‘hard to get’ and doesn’t respond right away.

...

#### Wednesday

Johnny texts Daniel a picture of a cat.  
Daniel responds: “I hate cats”  
Johnny: “monster”

Daniel asks Laura if she can hold down the fort for a few hours Friday night.

“Got a hot date?” she asks.

“I’m not sure. Maybe? I think so.”

“Oh Daniel,” she smiles over the phone.

...

#### Thursday

Daniel:”Are you free tomorrow night?”  
Johnny: “yep. When/where”  
Daniel: “my place at 7?”  
Johnny: “…”  
Daniel texts his address.  
Johnny: “u still live there? omg”

...

#### Friday

Daniel spends a couple of hours straightening and cleaning his apartment. He knows it doesn’t measure up in any way to Johnny’s place, and he hopes it doesn’t matter. He’s already decided to order in Thai, have both wine and the makings for martinis on hand, and he’ll wear jeans and his dark blue v-neck. What else he’s going to do with the man, he’s not sure. He’s not even sure this is a date - he thinks Johnny was sending signals Monday night, but it’s been a long time since he’s tried to read anyone’s signals and he’s a little worried his radar is off. What if he’s misinterpreting this whole thing and Johnny is just being friendly?

By 6:45 he’s dressed, anxious, and not quite sure what to do with himself. He goes to the mailbox, again, and runs into Carmen and Miguel in the courtyard.

“You look nice,” she observes. “Blue is a good color for you. No work tonight?”

“Not tonight, I have a… thing.”

“Well, good for you, Daniel, it’s about time,” and she’s looking him up and down with a suggestively raised eyebrow, making him flush.

Miguel, at fifteen, is looking at him skeptically. “A thing,” he challenges. “Like a date?”

“What do you know about dates,” he laughs. “What are you, fourteen? Have you had a date?”

Miguel’s giggling. “I’ve had dates –“

Carmen rolls her eyes at them both and walks away towards their apartment.

“You have not.” He holds up a hand for Miguel to punch, catches the kid’s fist and goads, “You punch like a girl.” The kid’s after him then, trying playfully to break through his defenses, and then Daniel’s showing him how to block, and how to break free if he’s grabbed by the arm, until they’re full-on wrasslin’-

“Hey.” Johnny’s standing there, watching them with a crooked grin.

Daniel and Miguel freeze and separate; Daniel’s a little embarrassed to be caught wrestling with a teenager by his maybe-date, who in turn is being stared at, open-mouthed, by the teenager, and he’s out of breath to top it all off. “All right, Miguel – later.” The kid hightails it home, eyes huge.

“Come on in – sorry about that - hey, you look good.” _Shit, was that too forward?_

“Likewise,” Johnny’s grinning back at him, and Daniel feels himself blush, again. _Shit._

“So, this isn’t the Ritz, but the food’s on it’s way – um, you should know I don’t really cook,” he explains when Johnny gives him a look. “Can I make you a drink?”

“I’ll have whatever you’re having,” he replies, so Daniel decides to open the wine. They’re standing a little awkwardly in his small kitchen while he pours, and he notices Johnny looking around with interest.

“It’s a little nicer than it was when ma and I lived here in the eighties. It was a serious dump back then. They’ve renovated it twice since we graduated. We were in a different apartment, upstairs.” He hands a glass to Johnny, who sips and gives a little nod of approval.

“How long have you lived here?”

“It’s been eight or nine years. I rented the apartment after my wife and I divorced, and I never left. It’s enough for me, and it’s close to work.”

“Divorce… that must have been hard.” Johnny’s not saying it, but his expression and posture is broadcasting curiosity, even confusion, and Daniel’s realizing it’s time to do some explaining, which means coming out to Johnny fucking Lawrence and accepting the consequences, whatever they may be. So he steels himself, looks Johnny in the eyes, and – there’s a brisk knock at the door.

“Shit,” he says, “food’s here, hold that thought –“

While he’s setting the plates and the phad tai onto his little dining table, pouring the tom kha soup into bowls and refilling their wine glasses, Johnny prompts him impatiently. “You were about to say?”

“The divorce, right. I wanted kids, and she didn’t – well, not with me. She has two kids now with some guy named Anoush, and they run those Norouzi Auto Group dealerships. She always wanted to do that, and I had no interest in selling cars. Also, my bisexuality was an issue.”

He looks for a reaction, and he’s not disappointed; Johnny’s face goes a startling shade of scarlet, which makes him worry all over again that he’s badly misread the signals. Thinking through the last twenty minutes, he realizes Johnny has been very quiet, and he’s been doing most of the talking which is a thing he does when he’s nervous. _Shit._

“Johnny, are you uncomfortable? I didn’t mean –“

He seems to jolt out of whatever reaction he’s having. “LaRusso, no, we’re good,” he reassures. “I’m, uh, having some feels over here, give me a minute.”

“Having feels,” he repeats with a nervous chuckle, “that sounds like something Miguel would say. Come on, sit, relax. Hope you like phad thai.”

They sit on opposite sides of the little table and look cautiously at each other. “Miguel seems like a good kid,” Johnny finally starts.

“He’s a great kid,” he enthuses. “They moved in about a year ago; his mom is a nurse over at the hospital, works a lot of hours. I work evenings so I’m home most of the day and we got pretty friendly over the summer. He’s hilarious, you wouldn’t believe the shit that comes out of his mouth. Well, maybe you would, you have students that age. His grandma lives with them and she sends him over with tamales sometimes.”

“You’re good with him,” Johnny observes. “You ever think about getting involved? Like, you’d have a blast running a class at the dojo. You could bring Miguel.”

It’s Daniel’s turn to flush, again. “I’ve been out of it for too long. I wouldn’t know how to start.”

“Bullshit. It all came back to you Monday. You should think about it. It doesn’t have to be that location.” He thinks a minute, then, “It doesn’t have to be Cobra Kai. There are other dojos. I’m not pressuring you, it’s just – LaRusso, you were having such a good time. It was… nice to see.”

There’s something tender in Johnny’s voice, almost a longing, that brings Daniel up short and makes him pay attention. “I’ll have to sit with that one a minute,” he tells him gently. “It, uh, means a lot to me that you’d offer.”

For a few minutes, both quietly dig into their pad thai. Johnny nods in approval – “this is good.”

“It’s your turn on the hot seat,” Daniel smiles. “You said you never met the right person?”

Johnny shrugs. “Turnabout’s fair play. I’ve dated a lot of women, but none of them ever stuck. Something was always missing. This is hard for me, so bear with me.”

“You don’t have to-“ Cripes, he’s hashing this all up.

“Yeah I do. I figured out pretty early that I was… more interested in men. But I couldn’t accept it. I pushed it aside and tried to be straight. I did that for years. When I turned forty, I finally decided to stop pretending. Life is too short, right? I’m out to a handful of people, but, um, I’m not, like, active. I haven’t really figured that out yet. How to, uh, date? Meet people. I’m not going to put a dick pic on grindr.”

Startled, he barks a sharp laugh. “Jesus, Johnny, there’s a mental image I didn’t expect. So… you knew early?”

Johnny grins, but he’s still blushing deeply and looking down at the fork he’s twisting in his noodles. “Yeah, I knew back then, but you know the crowd I was running with. They would have kicked my ass. Kreese would have kicked me out out of the dojo, Sid might have kicked me out of the house –“

“Sid?”

“My stepfather – not a tolerant guy.”

“Yeah. The eighties, huh.”

“You?”

“Oh, I’m a slow learner, Johnny. I didn’t figure out I was, uh, flexible until… yeah, this is embarrassing.”

“You don’t have to-“

“Turnabout’s fair play, right?” He shrugs. “So, when Amanda and I ran into problems in our marriage, we tried to spice things up, sort of a… swinger’s thing? And, I tried some new things with guys, and they were pretty great, but Amanda was freaked out about it, said she didn’t know who I was any more. And then Amanda met Anoush, that wasn’t so great.” This is an understatement; the experience had been devastating, from the emotional betrayal itself through the division of assets and the divorce, and now he has to look at their goddamned faces on billboards everywhere he goes.

Johnny is staring at him in open-mouthed amazement. “Swinging? I had no idea you had it in you, LaRusso.”

“Uh, me either?” He’s laughing at Johnny’s unintentional double-entendre, and at the same time he’s feeling so much relief that he can finally, openly talk about this part of himself. Now that the unbearable awkwardness is gone, he feels lighter, and he hopes Johnny does too. He knows it might be the wine talking, and right now he doesn’t care.

They linger over dinner until nearly 9. After Daniel’s cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher, and Johnny’s hinted at the time of night and the drive back to his condo, Johnny broaches the question that also weighs heavily in Daniel’s mind. “Level with me, LaRusso. Was this a date?”

“I don’t know,” he demurs. “Do you want it to be?”

“That’s a cop-out,” Johnny chides, but he reaches out with one hand to Daniel’s own and holds it. His hand is very warm, and Daniel experiences a heady rush of arousal at this simple touch.

“I’d like it to be,” Daniel admits.

“Well, don’t sound so excited about it,” Johnny responds, but he’s smirking and his eyes are warm. “Would you be open to a second date?”

Johnny is definitely looking at his lips, Daniel realizes. “Yes,” he answers simply.

“Okay, that wasn’t so hard,” Johnny responds, and _leans in_.

For all of Daniel’s sexual experimentation in his and Amanda’s brief swinging days, he hasn’t had the experience of kissing a man he really likes until right now. He’s used to being the taller one, so being shorter by a couple of inches, having to crane his head up and even perch on his toes a little, is novel. Johnny’s broad shoulders make him feel achingly warm and safe; Johnny’s body pressing firmly against his own makes him feel something altogether different.

They reluctantly break apart, and Johnny gazes down at him with swollen lips and mussed hair in a way no one’s looked at him in a long time.

“All right,” Johnny says. “Soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at [dedlit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dedlit/pseuds/dedlit)'s wonderful [art of the first Daniel/Johnny interaction](https://64.media.tumblr.com/196c88e3508ffc76fa991fa20f322892/214efbd59ac9e39e-41/s2048x3072/83e90fc4fe3f9e8ec66abc4a3689fcb0f9a204c8.pnj) in the bar! I love everything about this and am so honored to receive this gift and share with readers!
> 
> I also want to credit narcissablaxk's [To the Light and the Thunder](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26361466/chapters/64205335) for the idea that Johnny's in the know about Aisha coming out. Something about that just illustrates _so well_ Johnny's evolution from his asshole teenage self.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laura is already sitting at one of the hightop tables wrapping silverware when he settles into the chair next to her. “Like some help?” he offers.
> 
> She looks at him skeptically, one eyebrow arched. “Must have been a good night.”
> 
> He startles. “What?”
> 
> “You have quite a hickey there.”
> 
> Unbelievable – here they are, two grown men , and Johnny marked him? How did he not notice? He thinks back to that morning, and suddenly he’s blushing hotly.  
> Now Laura’s laughing at him. “Someone’s got it bad,” she croons.
> 
> He swats her arm in retaliation, embarrassed. “Get back to work.”

#### Saturday

Daniel does everything he can think of to distract himself from thinking about Johnny kissing him, and it’s not working for exactly the same reasons it doesn’t work to try not to think about a polar bear. The harder he tries, the more at the forefront of his mind the memory is. He’s thinking about that kiss when he gets dressed for the day, when he puts the dishes away and discards the wine bottle in the recycle bin, when he picks up his mail, when he’s writing out his grocery list: Johnny’s hands on his shoulders pulling him close, Johnny’s broad chest against his, how he smelled like sandalwood and mint and a little something spicy underneath, the feel of his lips, his tongue in his mouth – he finally takes himself in hand and vigorously rubs one out just to relieve his sexual tension. 

And it’s only _noon_. He groans.

Now that he can focus, he electronically transfers the apartment rent for the month, leaving his account light but still in the positive, then drives in to the bar early to run payroll for the week, pay the bar’s utility bills, and put in this week’s kitchen and alcohol orders. It’s been a great few weeks, revenue-wise, and he feels pretty good about the business accounts by the time he finishes, an hour before the doors open.

It’s in this liminal space that Daniel is able to take some time to think about what has passed and what is next. He considers what Johnny said about getting back into karate through teaching. Could he? Should he? He really hasn’t spent time with any kids or teens other than Miguel, and that’s very recent and very casual. More importantly, is he, Daniel, fit to teach anything to anyone after he failed his own teacher so completely? He is nothing like the man Miyagi was; how could he ever fill his shoes as a teacher in his own right? He fears he can’t.

With this sobering thought in mind, he unlocks the front door ahead of his staffs’ arrival for the busiest night of the week.

By 9pm, he’s fully in the swing of operations; having helped the band with their setup, he’s pinch-hitting behind the bar and delivering a few orders to tables as well as keeping an eye on Maria behind the bar and Mei on the floor when he feels his cellphone buzz in his rear pocket. It’s a text from Johnny.

> John: pick u up Monday at 6?

His gut tightens in a combination of excitement and nervousness; he feels an involuntary smile stretch across his face as he texts his answer:

> LaRusso: sounds good  
> LaRusso: what do u have in mind?

> John: You’ll see ;)

Laura spots him grinning at his phone behind the bar. “What are you up to over there?” she asks teasingly. “It must have gone well last night.”

“It went all right,” he says, but he hasn’t managed to tamp down his expression into something more businesslike, and this makes Laura laugh.

“Well, I can’t wait to meet her,” she tells him.

“We’ll see,” he replies ambiguously.

He’s still floating on a happy cushion of anticipation at the end of the night as the last of the clientele trickle out, followed eventually by the staff, then he and Laura are the last out the door. Laura probably headed right home as any sensible person would do at 2am on a Saturday night. Daniel, however, ran out of eggs that morning and didn’t make it out to the grocery store before heading to the bar that afternoon, so he decides to run by the Stop n Go on the way to the apartment. Later, he’ll blame his own distraction and lack of focus for what happens next.

He’s accosted between his truck and the convenience store by two men armed with knives who demand his money, wallet, and the keys to his truck. He disables one of the two quickly enough by kicking his knees out from under him and shoving him to the ground; the man’s head hit the ground with a sickening thud. The second man is a little faster than he expects, though, parting the meat of his upper arm through his shirt with a backhanded slash Daniel is too slow to block. He ignores the pain and forces himself to focus as the man circles him in search of another opening. When the man attempts another jab, this time towards his midsection, he’s able to divert the blow, throw the man off balance and land a solid kick to his torso. The wind knocked out of him, the man stumbles to the ground, where he’s able to get him pinned with his knee and grab the knife out of his hand.

Daniel tells the store clerk to call 911 but leaves before the police arrive, taking the knife with him. He very much doesn’t want to get involved. Given his shitty high-deductible health insurance, he decides not to seek medical care for his arm; instead, he tapes it closed and bandages it as well as he can at home, and throws away his ruined shirt.

…

#### Sunday

After his usual morning run, healthy breakfast, and perusal of the news, Johnny spends the rest of the morning on pins and needles trying to figure out what to do for his date with LaRusso tomorrow, clicking through tripadvisor and yelp and googling ‘date ideas’ like he’s a clueless teenager all over again. Finally, he sets all of that bullshit aside and just thinks… what does LaRusso like to do? Well, he liked sparring, but they did that last Monday, and that’s not really date material. He talked a lot about making ravioli when they were making dumplings, but he can’t very well invite the guy over to make him ravioli, can he? That would be lame, plus they already did a cooking date, kind of. They could go see a movie and have dinner, but that’s such a cliché. They could go parking, but he doesn’t want him to think he just wants to get laid. He owns a bar, so going out and getting drinks isn’t going to be very interesting. Ugh, why is this so much harder for him to figure out with LaRusso than it ever was with the chicks he’s dated? That seemed simple by comparison.

Finally, he finds just the thing – a retro arcade that has video games and pinball machines from the 80s and serves Asian food. It’s genius – and they’re taking reservations for Monday.

He feels light and optimistic when he drives into the Reseda dojo for his afternoon classes; now that the burden of the date itself is off of his mind, he’s free to think about LaRusso looking at him with those big brown eyes, how relaxed and happy he was on the beach compared to how stressed and tightly-wound he seemed at his bar and at Home Depot, how playful he was with that kid at his apartment complex. Johnny can’t think of a time when he’s been so excited about a date.

His optimism buoys him through his first class, even after he has to call them to order twice because they’re distracted and yammering about some stupid youtube video they’ve all been group-chatting to each other. After the second class with the older kids is also disrupted, he loses his patience – these guys are old enough to know better – so he calls his lead student to account.

“What is the problem here, Aisha?” he demands.

“Sorry sensei, it’s this video. Someone posted it to the valley subreddit last night. Look at this, these two guys try to rob this other guy, and he kicks both their asses with _real_ karate. It happened right over at the Stop n Go.”

Johnny stares at the video on her phone, open-mouthed. “Son of a bitch.”

She continues, “Everyone’s trying to figure out who he is.”

The fucking Tacoma is right there in the background; thankfully, the plate isn’t visible in the video. “Text me that link?”

After post-practice cleanup, he changes into street clothes and drives over to The Boardroom, sees LaRusso’s truck out back, and parks in the front. Before he goes in, he takes a moment to detangle his confused feelings and parse out his intentions, because he knows storming into the bar to confront LaRusso probably doesn’t make sense and certainly isn’t helpful. He’s angry – but why? The video clearly shows he was just defending himself. He’s also concerned because it looks like the guy cut him, although it must not be serious if he drove himself to work today.

LaRusso is the first one to spot him this time, and his face breaks into an open smile. “Hey Johnny,” he calls, “didn’t expect you! Come on in! How was class?”

“Hey,” Johnny says, working to keep his tone neutral. “I wanted to check on you. Had a feeling you might be a little sore today.”

“Why do you ask?” He’s pretending surprise but Johnny can tell he knows _exactly_ what he’s talking about, and he’s irrationally irritated LaRusso’s feigning ignorance.

“There’s a video. It’s all over the internet.”

“Ok.” He’s gone expressionless.

“Why would you go to the Stop n Go at 2am?”

Now LaRusso looks irritated. “Johnny, I’m not used to answering to anyone for my whereabouts. I needed eggs.”

“You needed eggs.” 

“Yeah, I ran out. I like scrambled eggs in the morning. Did you come here to interrogate me?”

Johnny realizes this conversation is not going well at all, and his only chance to salvage this is to tap out. “I don’t mean to be weird. I was just worried, but you look all right. Are you all right?”

The other man softens. “I’m fine. I’m a little sore. I guess… it’s been a while since anyone worried about where I was.”

“I’m sorry for rolling in here the way I did.”

LaRusso rolls his eyes, but he also quirks a crooked smile and leans in closely enough for Johnny to feel the warmth of his body. “Show me the video,” he demands, and there’s a teasing note in his voice. “Had to be the clerk – little shit.”

After a few minutes watching, rewatching, and arguing playfully over his tactics, Johnny nudges him lightly with his shoulder. “Still on for tomorrow?” 

“Oh yeah, we’re still on.”

Johnny _loves_ when LaRusso flirts with him.

…

#### Monday

When he pulls up to the South Seas apartments a few minutes before 6, his chest feels tight and there’s an anxious little pit in his stomach. It doesn’t help when he enters the little courtyard and finds the kid, Miguel, watching him with interest from the upstairs balcony.

“Hey kid,” he greets. “I’m Johnny. You’re Miguel, right?”

“Yeah, hey,” the kid replies, pretending nonchalance – but he’s watching Johnny like a hawk.

After he knocks, he doesn’t have to wait for long for LaRusso to open the door and usher him in. His date’s on the sharper side of casual, wearing black jeans and a collared shirt, and he’s smooth-faced; in fact, if Johnny’s not mistaken, he catches the fresh scent of shaving cream. Something about this evidence of preparation for their night out tugs pleasantly at him, and he can’t suppress a little smirk – he’s not the only one who’s a little on edge. “You look good,” he compliments him, and is rewarded when LaRusso flushes from his neck up to his cheeks. _Oh my god, he’s going to destroy me before we even get in the car._

The drive down congested route 101 flies by while LaRusso explores his playlists through the Audi’s screen. “What is this EDM shit,” he challenges before finally settling on his retro playlist, muttering, “this is more like it.” Johnny has to grin over at him; his taste in music is so obviously stuck in some pre-millennial time warp.

“Dude, you’re gonna love this place,” he enthuses – so far, he’s refused to actually tell LaRusso where they’re going, and it’s making him crazy, which is endlessly entertaining. “Quit being a control freak,” he told him as they were merging onto the 101, “just trust me.”

“You remember beating the shit out of me for months?” he challenges, “and now I’m supposed to trust you?” 

Johnny glances over to him to see if he’s serious, and the jerk is grinning at him wolfishly. “I can still take you down,” he warns, “don’t push it-“

“We’ll see about that.” 

“Oh yes, we will.”

The Button Mash is all he hoped it would be, and more – as soon as they walked into the place, LaRusso’s eyes light up. “It’s like twenty Golf n Stuffs,” he breathes in amazement. “How did you find this?”

“The Google,” Johnny informs him flippantly. “And I’m going to kick your ass on every one of these games.”

“We’ll see about that,” LaRusso retorts, again, and Johnny has to restrain the impulse to tackle him right then and there. But as they look around, they discover that they’re not at all out of place here. It’s a minor revelation for two men who grew up in the 1980s, during the era of the AIDS panic and far-less-evolved attitudes towards homosexuality, to see same-sex couples mixed in with the rest, casually holding hands at a pinball machine, or gazing into each other’s eyes over their dinner. Even in LaRusso’s own bar, it’s unusual to see couples who aren’t heteronormative.

“This is awesome,” LaRusso tells him.

It’s after 10 by the time Johnny drives them both back to LaRusso’s apartment complex; chivalrously (he thinks) he escorts his date to his door. While Johnny stopped at one drink given he’s driving, his date had a couple and seems to be feeling the effects. He’s thankful the neighbor kid isn’t watching when Daniel pulls him in for a deep kiss outside his door.

“You should come in,” he invites, and Johnny can’t resist those big brown eyes. He follows him into the apartment, then swallows nervously when his date closes and locks the door behind him.

“I don’t want to take advantage of you in your weakened state,” he teases, and if his nervousness comes through in his voice, surely he can’t be blamed – this is all pretty new to him.

“Just for a few minutes,” LaRusso murmurs, and leans in close.

Johnny gathers him tightly, buries his hands in that dark, thick hair – he’s been looking forward to that all night – and locks their lips together, and it feels fantastic, so much different than any kiss he’s shared with any girl, and different than the handful of attempts he’s made with guys since he entered his forties. Daniel leans into him, pressing their bodies together, and he feels Daniel’s arms press into his back. Instantly he’s hard, and better yet, he can feel against his hip that LaRusso is too. He can’t hold back a little moan then, and he feels more than hears the other man do the same.

LaRusso reaches a hand under Johnny’s shirt against his lower back, and the sudden skin to skin contact prompts Johnny to reciprocate, letting go of Daniel’s hair in favor of unfastening his buttons, starting with the bottom one. “Is this ok?” he breathes. 

“Yes,” LaRusso tells him, looking into his eyes.

“This is so fucking hot,” he says, almost to himself, but LaRusso laughs quietly as he works his way through the rest of his buttons and pushes the shirt off his shoulders. It’s dark in the room – they hadn’t turned on any lights when they entered – but when he pulls LaRusso’s undershirt over his head, he doesn’t miss it when he flinches and hisses in pain.

“Shit, what-“ he starts.

“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it,” Daniel says impatiently.

“Stop,” he demands. “Let me see. Where’s the light?”

“Come on, Lawrence.” But he flips on the light switch.

The bandage has bled through, and Johnny can see the redness of his skin around the overlaying wrapping. It looks inflamed. “Did you have this looked at?” he demanded.

“It’s just a cut. Come off it.”

“No. Come on, where’s your bathroom?”

When he removes the ineptly-wrapped gauze and the bandage underneath, it’s clear as day to him that the cut isn’t minor – it’s deep, and the edges aren’t closed – and it’s becoming infected. He needs some kind of medical attention.

“You really know how to kill the mood, you know that?” his date informs him. It’s clear he’s not just moderately drunk, but also irritated… and embarrassed? 

“We’re going to an urgent care,” Johnny informs him.

“For fuck’s sake. I can’t afford a doctor visit right now, ok?”

He loses his patience and his temper flares. “You can’t afford sepsis, you asshole,” he shouts. “Put on a shirt and get in the goddamned car.”

LaRusso sulks the entire five blocks to the 24-hour urgent care, infuriating Johnny. Who does this? “You can’t just let shit like this go. What was it, a fucking butcher knife?”

“I kept it if you want to see it,” he tells him proudly. “It’s in the dishwasher.”

“Jesus, LaRusso, are you twelve?” he demands as they park, but he also bursts out a laugh. The knife is in his fucking dishwasher? He glares over at Daniel, who’s trying and failing to hold back a loopy grin. “Come on, jackass. Let’s get you fixed up.”

After an uncomfortably long wait, a PA washes out the wound, a doctor shows up to stitch him up properly and inject him with a megadose of antibiotics, Johnny quietly pays the excruciating bill, then they’re sent on their way with prescriptions for a 10-day course of antibiotics and a few days of painkiller Daniel insists he doesn’t need. They stop at the 24-hour pharmacy and wait for both prescriptions to be filled.

It’s after 3am by the time Johnny and an appropriately-chastened, sobered Daniel return to the South Seas. “Johnny, I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have had to do this.”

“Least I can do,” Johnny replies. “I owed you one.” He’s thinking about all those months of bullying Daniel had alluded to earlier, when they were driving to the arcade.

“It’s late,” LaRusso says. “Why don’t you stay here?”

Johnny’s conflicted. Hell yes he wants to stay, but he doesn’t want it to be awkward. “I don’t know-“

“Come on, don’t drive home at this time of night. You have to be exhausted.”

He really is, so he nods. “Thank you. Um, no pressure, obviously.”

“We’re sharing a bed,” LaRusso informs him. “God forbid you pressure me into any funny business, Lawrence, I might have to defend myself.” He rolls his eyes.

It’s nice in an unexpectedly domestic, comforting way to take turns washing up in LaRusso’s little bathroom before climbing under the covers together in their t-shirts and skivvies. It doesn’t even matter that they’re both so tired all either of them wants to do is crash.

“Big spoon or little spoon?” Johnny offers; “Shut up, Lawrence,” is the reply he gets… but it turns out he does get to be the big spoon. LaRusso doesn’t even object when he presumptuously wraps an arm around his chest to pull him in close.

…

#### Tuesday

It feels strange to Daniel to wake up with someone else for the first time in… Christ, has it been ten years?... and, it’s good. Comfortable. Warm.

He’s the first to wake, and he wants more than anything to roll to his other side to face Johnny, but he’s too sore to lay on that arm, so he rolls onto his back, turning his head to look at his high school nemesis. In sleep, his face is relaxed, unlined and soft in a way it never is awake. His hair is mussed like it was at the end of their first ‘date’ at Daniel’s place, and his cheeks are speckled with surprising, coppery flecks of stubble. 

He reaches across to card his fingers gently through Johnny’s hair, knowing this will wake him. “It’s almost seven thirty,” he whispers. “Do you need to get up for work?”

Johnny is slow to wake and slower to open his eyes; when he finally does, he rests his free hand on Daniel’s chest for a moment, then cups his jaw. “Not yet,” he breathes, and turns Daniel’s face to his own for a gentle kiss. Daniel tightens his fingers into a grip and tugs him closer by his hair; Johnny takes the hint and rolls on top, on his elbows and knees, caging Daniel securely underneath him. 

They pause and look at each other for a long moment, rumpled morning hair and sheet-creased cheeks and all, until Daniel seizes the hem of Johnny’s t-shirt with both hands and pulls it up, over his shoulders. Johnny sits up to remove his shirt the rest of the way, then returns the favor, pulling Daniel’s own loose shirt off. He grabs one of Daniel’s knees – not the one he took out in ’84, and Daniel briefly wonders if that’s conscious or accidental – and pulls his leg firmly against his chest, pressing his hips against Daniel and gazing down at him, taking a complete visual inventory of his face, his body, his arms. Where Daniel expected to be self-conscious under this scrutiny, though, he feels bold. 

“Are you up for this?” Johnny asks, his voice rough.

“I am,” he confirms; he’s never been as ready for anything in his entire life as he is for this, right now. “The drawer.”

Johnny follows where he indicates and retrieves the lubricant; holding it, he hesitates. “LaRusso, I haven’t actually done this with a man before.”

“Johnny, I promise it’s not all that different. If you’re not sure, we should wait.”

“Oh, I’m sure, don’t get me wrong,” Johnny grins down at him, and Daniel finds he’s laughing, again. When has he ever laughed this much?

“Well, get to it then,” he goads, and to emphasize his own willingness, he thumbs under the waist of Johnny’s briefs, pulls the waistband over his rather impressive erection on their way down, and lightly runs both hands up his thighs, along his hips and across his belly. Johnny is squirming by the time he wraps his hands around his length and begins to stroke him; his breath hitches, his eyes close, he drops his head next to Daniel’s and groans.

“Yeah?” Daniel asks him.

“Oh fuck yeah,” Johnny replies, and bites gently into his neck, which makes him buck up against him. Inspired, Johnny sits up again, grabs Daniel’s other leg, and smoothly relieves him of his boxers while he finishes kicking off his own briefs. While Daniel watches, both legs still hitched up against his chest, Johnny dispenses some of his lube, one handed, and uses it on his entrance, pushing in one finger – Daniel involuntarily, deliciously clenches – then a second. Daniel tries to maintain the rhythm of his hands on Johnny’s cock, but it’s a struggle given the distraction of what Johnny’s doing to him.

“Oh my god, Johnny,” he moans. It’s been a while, and he feels vulnerable and a little overwhelmed, so he closes his eyes and turns his face aside-

“No, baby, stay with me,” Johnny demands, still working him with his fingers. “Daniel, please.”

It’s the first time he’s ever heard Johnny use his given name; he opens his eyes and looks up at him, and Johnny chooses that moment to withdraw his fingers and slowly push his length into Daniel. He feels like his heart stops, like he’s about to cry from the indescribable fullness; he clutches at Johnny’s shoulders while his body accommodates his girth. Johnny waits, his arms shaking, until Daniel murmurs his name. Then, every stroke makes him cry out – when he tries to quiet himself, even putting his hand over his mouth, Johnny doesn’t let him. “Come on, Daniel, let go for me,” he coaxes until Daniel comes shudderingly, loudly, clutching Johnny’s hips so hard he’s sure he’s leaving finger-shaped bruises. Johnny accelerates his pace, snapping his hips until he groans into his own release.

Daniel’s embarrassed to find his eyes are leaking tears; he chalks it up to the intensity and tries to blink them away before Johnny can see. Johnny pivots Daniel’s legs aside enough to collapse beside him, their bodies still joined even as Johnny softens inside him. He lets himself sink back into Johnny’s broad chest; Johnny embraces him and Daniel can feel he, too, is out of breath.

“Not that different, fucking hell, LaRusso,” he gasps, “what was that?”

“You tell me, Lawrence,” he pants back, and then they’re laughing breathlessly together.

“I dunno, but I think I want to go steady now,” Johnny murmurs in his ear, then bites his earlobe. Daniel flinches, laughs, and rolls onto his back enough to look at Johnny again; Johnny interleaves the fingers of one hand into his hair and thumbs the wetness under his eye. “I hope this is a good thing,” he whispers.

“Johnny,” he smiles up at him gently, “this was so good. Can I make you some eggs?”

…

Johnny’s still a little weak in the knees after they shower and have their first cups of coffee in their hands. He calls into the office to let them know he’ll be out until late morning – privilege of being the boss – and settles in to watch LaRusso scramble eggs.

“Thought you didn’t cook,” he comments. “Are these the robbery eggs?”

“Robbery eggs? No, I got these yesterday. Hey, here’s the knife.” He pulls it deftly out of the dishwasher and slides it across the counter to Johnny.

“Ok, that’s impressive,” he has to admit. “Didn’t the police need it as evidence?”

“I didn’t stay long enough for the police to show up,” LaRusso replied matter-of-factly as he’s dishing eggs onto their plates.

“Jesus Christ,” Johnny mutters.

At the door, Johnny holds him tightly, feeling utterly wrecked, tender and soft about this man who has let him into his life, his home, even his bed, even with their checkered history. He wishes he could stay, but this is real life, and both of them have businesses to run and commitments to keep. 

“I meant it when I said I want to go steady,” he murmurs, and feels more than hears Daniel laugh.

“I’d like that,” he confirms. “Call me sometime.”

…

Daniel falls back into bed and sleeps another four hours, then wakes up smelling Johnny’s scent in his sheets and feeling a pleasurable soreness from their morning together. He has just enough time to get dressed, make himself a sandwich, and sort through the mail before it’s time to drive into work.

Laura beat him into the building for once and is already sitting at one of the hightop tables wrapping silverware when he settles into the chair next to her.

“Like some help?” he offers, picking up half the stack of napkins.

She looks at him skeptically, one eyebrow arched. “Must have been a good night.” 

He startles. “What?”

“You have quite a hickey there.”

Unbelievable – here they are, two grown men , and Johnny _marked_ him? How did he not notice? He thinks back to that morning, Johnny moving inside him and entreating him to _let go_ \- and suddenly he’s blushing hotly.

Now Laura’s laughing at him. “Someone’s got it bad,” she croons.

He swats her arm in retaliation, embarrassed. “Get back to work.”

Among the earliest customers who trickle in when doors open at 5 is a business-suited woman who approaches Daniel directly behind the bar. “Daniel LaRusso?” she asks.

“That’s me,” he confirms.

“I’d like to speak with you about an incident early Sunday morning.” Her statement is dry, level, but he jolts in surprise.

“Ok, let’s, uh, step over here.” He leads the woman to the same booth where he and Johnny sat over a week ago, ignoring the significant look Laura’s giving him from the hostess station. “Can I ask who you are?”

Close up, he realizes she’s quite young, no more than thirty, and she’s nervous, fiddling with her bag and the card she’s holding in her hands.

“I’m with the L.A. County district attorney’s office; we’re prosecuting a case against two men who were arrested in connection with that incident. We need a victim statement, and may want you to testify.” She hands him the card, but he really doesn’t look at.

“How did you find me?”

“There’s security video of the incident that includes your vehicle’s license plate. You fit the description. And you just confirmed it was you, so.”

 _Shit._ “I’ll give a statement, but I’m not going to testify. I don’t want to get any more involved than I already am.”

“Can you give your statement now, to me?”

He looks around the floor – Tuesdays are usually light, and it’s still early. His usual bartender has arrived, and Laura has the floor covered. “All right. This isn‘t going to land in a newspaper somewhere or anything, is it?”

She pulls a laptop out of her bag and opens it up. If she thinks the question is odd, she doesn’t show it; he wonders if she’s used to reluctant witnesses, or maybe they deal with prominent people who don’t want their information landing in the tabloids. Not that anyone’s interested in what he’s up to – he supposes his concern is a little silly.

“I don’t expect it to. This is a small case,” she reassures him, and her initial nervousness seems to be gone. “Now, tell me what happened in your own words.”

…

#### Wednesday

Daniel wakes up to a text from Johnny.

Johnny: can I see you tonight? I know youre working  
Daniel: is this a booty-text?  
Johnny: wtf? No  
Johnny: maybe  
Daniel: come by the bar after work if u want  
Johnny: ok

He skips shaving, deciding he looks more rugged with and extra days’ growth, and dresses up more than he usually would for a Wednesday night at the bar in charcoal slacks and a lightweight gray sweater. He feels a little silly fussing over his clothes, even more so when he arrives at work when doors open and is greeted by raised eyebrows from both Mei and Maria.

“Looking good, boss,” Maria catcalls him from behind the bar, drawing the attention of a couple of customers already at the bar, one of whom also whistles at him. He waves them off good-naturedly on his way back to the office to check the bar’s email and social media presence as he does most nights. 

He’s surprised to find he has twenty new google reviews and clicks in to see what’s being posted. _Oh, what the everloving fuck._ It’s full of comments about ‘badass ninja skills’, references to fight club and highlander… where is this coming from? His business page on facebook is worse with a bunch of ridiculous meme posts, many of which make no sense to him. At least he can delete these.

“Your video went viral,” Johnny tells him when he shows up at 6:30, “and someone doxxed you.” They’re standing at one of the high-top tables near the bar; Johnny’s drinking a beer while Daniel sticks with water.

“Docked? What?” 

“Doxxed. Found out your identity and posted it. Honestly, LaRusso, you can’t buy PR this good. You should be all over this.”

Daniel buries his face in his hands and groans.

Johnny pulls it up on his phone – after Aisha sent him the link, he signed up for a reddit account – and confirms. “Yep. See? Someone posted the security video, and you can see your license plate in that one. This other guy saw your truck here last night, matched the plate, and boom. Welcome to your fifteen minutes of fame.”

“Oh yeah, another thing-“ Daniel starts, intending to chastise him for leaving a mark on his neck, but when he meets his clear blue eyes, all he can think of is how Johnny looked at him in the doorway of his apartment the morning before, all ruffled and soft, and he can’t do it. It looks like Johnny’s having similar thoughts; he’s wearing a little half-smile and pressing his shoulder against Daniel’s.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Listen, LaRusso, I had an idea. Actually a couple of ideas. I want you to come to my place tonight.”

“Is that an idea, or-“

“I mean, yeah… I just want to see you. It’s ok if it’s late.”

Daniel presses back against Johnny’s shoulder without looking at him, and he can’t hold back a secret little grin of his own. “I’ll text you when I’m leaving,” he says. “If it’s not too late… you can tell me.”

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah. What’s your other idea?”

“So hear me out. What would you think about doing a demonstration? With me? For the older kids? Show them some things they can’t learn from me.”

Daniel stills, both hands clenched on his glass, and works through his reaction to Johnny’s proposal. He knows how much it must mean to Johnny to extend this level of trust, respect, even friendship, and something about that makes his chest feel warm and tight. But he hasn’t managed to mentally decouple Johnny’s dojo from his memories of Mike Barnes, Terry Silver, and the brutalities they inflicted on him when he was too young to make sense of it. Those events cost him his relationship with Mr Miyagi, who was like a father to him for that short but pivotal time in his life, and deeply tainted the martial art for him. He was cast adrift for years. He can hardly breathe from the pain of it, even now. He was only 18 when he last wore a gi.

“LaRusso.”

He’s controlled his breathing through all of this and believes he’s at a point where he can speak, but he can’t face Johnny yet. “Let me think about it.” But he knows he can’t do it.

“I shouldn’t have sprung it on you, especially here. It was stupid.”

Daniel desperately wants to make an excuse and retreat to his office or to his truck, anything to flee his discomfort, but this is Johnny, so he forces himself to stay, be brave, and trust. He compels his hands to release his glass, and makes himself meet Johnny’s eyes with his own, feeling more naked right now than he did the morning before.

“It wasn’t stupid. Thank you for… I’ll try. Ok?”

Johnny looks back at him, and there’s something nameless in his expression. “Please come to me tonight.”

He focuses around him at the room for the first time in what feels like hours. No one’s looking at them; to anyone else, they’re just two men talking at a table. Outside their bubble, life goes on just as it always has. It’s quiet, even for a Wednesday; he should be able to break away at a reasonable hour.

“I’ll come,” he promises. They both chuckle a little at the double entendre before Johnny leaves for home.

Daniel checks in with Maria around 10. “Think it would be ok if I took off around 10:30?” he asks her. 

“We got it, boss,” she tells him confidently. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“No promises,” he says drily. “Thank you, Maria.”

…

When the knock on his door comes at 11, Johnny is quick to open it and usher LaRusso inside. “Have you eaten?” he demands, taking his duffel from his hand.

“I had some wings at the bar, I’m good. You’ve-?”

“Yeah, I’m good. Listen, LaRusso-“

“Johnny, I’ll do it.”

“-I shouldn’t have put you under pressure like that-“

“I’ll do it, but I need your help.”

Johnny takes a deep breath and absorbs what LaRusso has just told him. He studies his face, set and determined, and his eyes, direct and deep. “Anything,” he says. “Anything you need.”

Right now, I need you,” he answers. “Let’s figure out the rest tomorrow.”

This, Johnny is well-prepared for. Without further ado, he pulls LaRusso roughly to him; in return, LaRusso grabs the nape of his neck and kisses him firmly, then grasps both his shoulders and pushes him backwards and off balance. “You _marked_ me,” he accuses, his eyes flashing.

“I sure did, marked you good,” Johnny gloats, holding LaRusso’s forearms to steady himself against his shove.

LaRusso breaks Johnny’s hold on his arms brusquely, seizes him by the shoulders again, and thrusts him up against his own front door. Staring him down, he sets to work unbuttoning and unzipping his jeans. When Johnny reaches out for him, he pushes his arms back against the door – Johnny opens his palms in surrender. Then, he gets to his knees, pulling Johnny’s jeans down with him, and abruptly takes his cock into his mouth.

Johnny gasps and groans – _what the fuck?_ – and thrusts without meaning to, making him choke. But then LaRusso forces Johnny’s hips hard against the door, presses a palm to his abdomen to hold him still, and deepthroats him – _holy fuck_ , Johnny is losing his goddamned mind.

LaRusso comes up for air – “you don’t come yet”, he orders – then goes back down, only now he’s grabbed Johnny’s ass with both hands and is pulling him, thrusting him, deeper into his mouth.

Johnny’s toes curl and he strains, desperately tries to hold out, and fails. “I’m about to come-“ and that’s all the warning he is able to provide before he orgasms, explosively, into his throat. He _swallows_ every bit while Johnny watches, eyes huge. When he finally releases him from his mouth, Johnny slumps to his knees, certain he’s about to pass out. LaRusso steadies him and they sag against each other, both winded and panting.

“Jesus, Daniel,” he sobs, and now, LaRusso kisses him gently, carding the fingers of one hand through his hair and gently tracing the nape of his neck with the other hand.

“Johnny, let’s go to bed,” he suggests tenderly. 

“Ok,” he agrees weakly. In his dark bedroom, he undresses him, removing that soft sweater he wore tonight, then his trousers and briefs, and pulls him into his bed, folding them into a tender embrace. “You could warn a guy when you’re about to do something like that,” he suggests quietly.

“The surprise was half the fun,” LaRusso teases softly. “Was it too much?”

“It was fucking fantastic, but Jesus…”

In the middle of the night, Johnny makes tender love to him, holding him to his chest and listening to him moan with every deep, sweet stroke. “You’re being so good,” he coaxes. “Come for me, Daniel.” And he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some credit has to be given to dedlit for some of that last scene in Johnny’s condo. Beta-ing their work, Snake Pit, has broadened my horizons ;)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daniel presses their shoulders together – to Johnny, that never gets old – and murmurs, just for him, “I’m feeling better about the dojo after we defiled it the other day.”
> 
> “I might have said ‘christened’,” Johnny counters drily.
> 
> “Sullied?”
> 
> “Enjoyed…
> 
> “Broke it in.”
> 
> Johnny groans. “Seriously?”

#### Thursday

Thursday morning, Johnny’s alarm goes off at 7am, two hours later than it’s usually set, and LaRusso is sleeping so deeply he doesn’t even twitch. Johnny himself has also had one of the best nights of sleep he’s had in months, maybe years, and he’d already arranged for the morning off, ignoring the pleased little look his assistant Marla had given him the afternoon before. Maybe two late mornings in one week is a little excessive, he acknowledges… but now that he’s figured out what he’s been missing all these years, he can’t help himself.

Now, while Daniel’s asleep, he indulges his curiosity and really looks at him. Daniel evidently doesn’t spend hours outside nowadays the way he did in his youth, so his olive skin is not as brown as he remembers, but his hair is still the same, dark and thick and messy from the night before, and his face, especially relaxed in sleep, has hardly aged at all. He’s lean although certainly stronger than he looks judging by last night’s performance. (At the memory of Daniel’s full frontal assault, Johnny burns with a deep flush and his heart pounds with an echo of last night’s adrenaline rush.) This is the first opportunity he’s had to study the scarring Daniel habitually covers on his arms; he’s surprised to find they’re hardly perceptible, visible only as a few silver traces against his skin, and he thinks about why their impact in Daniel’s mind is so out of proportion to their appearance.

Johnny doesn’t have the heart to wake him; instead, he showers, dresses in athletic shorts and a t-shirt, and quietly brews himself a french press coffee. Intending to wait for Daniel before making breakfast, he settles in on the balcony with his ipad and coffee, checks the facebook page for Daniel’s bar first and has a good chuckle at the latest meme posts, including one where someone has edited lightsabers into the clerk’s video, even added the sound effects. Daniel really should leave some of these up.

After about 30 minutes, he hears the shower running and takes it as his cue to go into the kitchen and start preparing breakfast. He slices mushrooms and green onions, retrieves the shredded cheddar, whisks the eggs, and dishes out two little bowls of berries. He’s scrambling the eggs when Daniel wanders into the kitchen in his jeans and a long-sleeved Triumph t-shirt.

“LaRusso,” he greets.

“Lawrence,” Daniel replies with a crooked little grin. “Anything I can help you with?”

Johnny cocks an eyebrow at him suggestively, and is gratified when Daniel flushes. “Grab a couple of plates?” he suggests, pointing his chin at the appropriate cabinet.

They settle in out on the balcony and enjoy a quiet few minutes looking out at the ocean. Daniel observes, “You’re going in late again today. Is that ok?”

“Yeah, I took the morning off,” he confirms.

“I’d like to spend some time in the dojo,” Daniel starts. “Your dojo. Assuming that’s where you want to do it. It would help me, I don’t know, get more comfortable in there?”

“I shouldn’t have pressured you. Maybe it’s a bad idea.”

“You got past it,” Daniel says quietly. “It’s time for me to get past it too.”

Johnny is silent for a few minutes. Then, “Do you want to be by yourself? I’ll give you the keys.”

Daniel looks at him. “I’d like you there with me. Would you do that?”

“I told you I would do anything you need. When?”

“…This morning?”

“Ok.”

…

Although Daniel knows the way perfectly well, he follows Johnny’s Audi through mid-morning traffic to the Reseda location, and when they’re together, he is even able to walk inside as though it’s any other place. He even feels a little silly about it – he, Daniel LaRusso, needs a chaperone? – until they’re toeing their shoes off and he smells that locker-room smell, the stale air and the scent of the rubberized mats, and it all rushes back to him. He closes his eyes and controls his breathing until he’s able to clear his head, feeling Johnny watch him carefully.

“Is there anything you want to check out?” Johnny asks him. They’re standing at opposite ends of the training mats. “There’s some stuff in storage upstairs. The locker room. Storage area and bathroom in the back. My office. No one here but us.”

Daniel shakes his head. “Do you still have that training dummy?” he asks.

“No. We threw it out. We’d never use it with students.”

He sighs, relieved, and realizes he might actually be able to do this thing. “Let’s just do it. Work through what we’d demonstrate.”

Johnny nods determinedly, and they spend about an hour working through some of Daniel’s kata from that first day they’d sparred on the beach, applying and translating them into real-world contact scenarios. They even fool around with replicating some of their ’84 match, and incorporate some elements of Daniel’s encounter at the Stop n’ Go. Before the hour is out, they’re grinning at each other and horsing around completely off-script, and Daniel sweeps Johnny’s feet out from under him, landing him hard on his back.

“Oh shit, sorry-“

Johnny drags him down to the floor beside him, and they find themselves face to face on the mat, panting. “This is something they didn’t allow in the old days,” he laughs.

“That you know of,” Daniel retorts. When Johnny looks at him wide-eyed, he laughs uproariously. “Don’t look at me, Lawrence, I was a virgin until I was twenty.”

“I bet you were,” Johnny teases, and rolls on top of Daniel, face flushed and pupils blown wide. He lowers his body onto Daniel’s and rubs against him, hard.

“Here? What if someone-“

“No classes until 4,” Johnny tells him, eyebrows raised suggestively.

They keep most of their clothes on, pushing down Daniel’s jeans and Johnny’s shorts enough to get the job done. When Johnny pushes into Daniel, they’re face-to-face, moaning into each other’s mouths, Johnny grasping his hips while Daniel grips his shoulders through his shirt. Kreese would have been mortified; Daniel thinks about that gleefully as they climax together on the mat. Hurriedly, they pull their pants up, flat on their backs while they catch their breath.

“You know it’s two weeks since we ran into each other?” Johnny points out. 

“Two weeks… wow, you gave it up quick,” Daniel goads him. 

Johnny punches him in his good shoulder. “Asshole. I was hot for you thirty years ago.”

“Bullshit.”

“Seriously though. You think all that was about Ali?”

Daniel rolls onto his side to face him. “Is that what all that was about? I thought you just wanted to kill me. Running me off a cliff, beating the hell out of me with your gang, you and Bobby ganging up on me…”

Johnny groans. “I was an asshole, ok? I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Daniel looks at him with a crooked grin. “You really were an asshole-“

“Jeez, LaRusso, give a guy a break-“

“-but you’re redeeming yourself.” He pulls him in for a soft kiss, then breaks away with a resigned sigh. “Back to real life.”

…

Daniel drives to his apartment and uses the handful of hours he has at his disposal to run a few loads of laundry through the apartments’ coin-operated washing machines, and the wait between loads gives him time to think about the last couple of weeks. 

This thing with Johnny really has moved fast, faster than he’s experienced before. They enjoy a lot of the same things, always did when he thinks back on it, and once he moved beyond their history as teenagers, all the little traumas and insults they visited on each other, he’s found he’s at ease with Johnny in a way he hasn’t been with anyone in a long time.

The sex is also mind-blowing; he thinks about Johnny directing him to _look at him_ , and his face grows hot just thinking about the unaccustomed intimacy. After his and Amanda’s early passion winnowed down to rote missionary-style encounters they scheduled into their calendars like some kind of obligatory business meeting, his experiences have been single-serving, one-off assignments with nearly-anonymous partners they picked up through an app, then occasional solo forays he’d made after the divorce. None of these ever turned into anything more. He can’t remember the last time someone really looked at him; he’s become so used to invisibility that he’s having to re-learn what it is to be noticed.

He knows what he sees in Johnny; aside from the sex and maybe the nostalgia, he can’t imagine what Johnny sees in him. Johnny is the same sort of golden boy as an adult that he was as a teenager, successful, high-functioning, responsible – he even _eats healthy_ – and Daniel is… well, he’s living in the same grotty apartments he lived back in the 80s with his mom, subsisting on scrambled eggs, pbj sandwiches and chicken wings from the bar, still battling demons Johnny vanquished years ago, still sleeping past noon and living paycheck to paycheck. 

What could he possibly have to offer Johnny? Why would he stick around? What makes him think he won’t be left all over again? He brings to mind Johnny’s tenderness in the middle of the night, hoping to recapture that warm feeling – but doubt claws at him as he dresses for the work night ahead.

When they open the doors at 5 for the early Thursday after-work clientele, there’s an unpleasant surprise waiting for him – a reporter from one of the local news channels. “We’d like to do a highlight feature on you,” she tells him, “just a quick segment at the end of the evening news. We like to highlight something funny, or heartwarming. Your video going viral, you taking down two criminals, it’s great stuff.” When he looks doubtful, she continues, “It could boost your business.”

“Have you ever heard the saying, ‘The tallest blade of grass is the first to be cut by the scythe’?” he asks her. “I don’t know how or when, but this would come back to bite me.” He feels a tightness in his chest that tells him his anxiety level is approaching critical, and although he’s having trouble parsing why this all makes him so uncomfortable, it reinforces his position – he cannot entertain this.

He feels her look him up and down, taking in his creased jeans, plain black t-shirt and sneakers. “Here’s my card in case you change your mind,” she tells him after a moment. “You might be surprised.”

For the rest of the busy Thursday evening, he subsumes himself into his work, a convenient distraction from all of the noise in his head, going so far as to leave his cellphone in his office. He doesn’t notice Laura watching him with concern; he goes home exhausted, determines not to pick up his phone (his stomach is uncomfortably clenched as he makes that decision) and escapes into the oblivion of sleep.

…

Although it’s only half a workday for Johnny, it feels like an eternity. First, Marla continually grins at him, very obviously wanting to ask him what’s going on, who he’s seeing, and because he hasn’t come out to anyone at work, it’s uncomfortable. What should he say? Also, he keep replaying the previous night in his mind – Daniel tacking him in his apartment, and their middle of the night lovemaking – so he’s not focused at all on business. It’s a struggle to get through every meeting and draft every email. He does wrap up the day by finally choosing a marketing firm, emailing the award announcement as the last email he sends for the day. In this, at least, he can feel a sense of accomplishment.

At a stoplight on his drive home, he texts Daniel. “Seen any good memes today?” Disappointingly, there’s no reply by the time he gets home, where the two plates and two coffee cups in the sink and the unmade bed all remind him of Daniel. He doesn’t want to be clingy or overbearing – he remembers how the other man reacted when he demanded to know why he was at the convenience store at 2am - so he doesn’t text again until nearly midnight: “hope everything is ok”. 

In a limbo he didn’t expect, he has an uncomfortable, restless night.

…

#### Friday

After all of Friday passes with no response at all, Johnny feels like he’s losing his mind; he can’t believe LaRusso is _ghosting_ him like he was some kind of one-night stand, like there wasn’t anything real between them. But maybe… he thinks back over the last week, and wonders if it’s possible he misunderstood where LaRusso was really at when it came to their relationship. After all, he has had serious relationships before, he’s even been married. He’s experimented and experienced well beyond anything Johnny has. Maybe this was just another sexual dalliance for him – seducing his high-school nemesis and breaking him into his first homosexual experience as a conquest. Could it have been some kind of twisted revenge? He feels sick as soon as the thought flashes into his mind.

But it sure didn’t feel like a game at the time, not to Johnny. It didn’t seem to be a casual roll in the hay to LaRusso, either… at the time.

By Friday evening, Johnny feels himself spiraling down in a way that he knows from long experience is not going to take him to a good emotional place. He takes a run on the beach, then works through katas for an hour – and then he checks his phone. Nothing. He makes a slapdash dinner and eats it without really tasting any of it – then he checks his phone. He watches a movie on Netflix; as soon as the credits roll, he can’t remember what he just watched. Still nothing on his phone.

He makes himself a gin-and-tonic, heavy on the gin. Then a second, but this one’s 100% gin. After that, he loses track.

…

When Daniel’s alarm went off that morning, he was forced to look at the screen. He sees the little indication of two texts, feels his chest tighten, and turns his phone on silent, not ready to face Johnny’s need, his disappointment – his anger? What could Daniel say to him? He’s a fuckup; he can’t deal with an uncomfortable conversation; he doesn’t know how to explain how he’s feeling; he’s just so fucking afraid.

He puts his thoughts off so he can choke down his coffee and his scrambled eggs, take his antibiotic (carefully not thinking about Johnny forcing him to go to the doctor that night, which of course means he’s thinking about it), pick up his mail, pay his cable bill… all of the little distractions he can put between himself and how he’s feeling. He stops by the office supply store to restock on pens, then by the hardware store to buy stuff from the list Laura gave him the night before, and avoids looking at his silenced cellphone.

Until customers start rolling in at six, he spends his time cleaning up the social media accounts he has direct ownership of, and flagging all of the jokey reviews in the forums he can’t address directly. By the time the band starts setting up at 8, he’s deeply focused on serving tables, restocking the bar, helping the band with the audio – finally, Laura grabs him by the arm and pulls him off the floor, nudging him through the kitchen and into his office. He tamps down his irritation when she closes the door behind them, and schools his face carefully into an expression of concern.

“Laura, what’s the matter?”

“That’s what I want to know,” she replies, taking a seat and motioning him to do the same. He realizes he is very much being managed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, everything’s fine.”

“Don’t bullshit me. You’re avoiding me and snapping at everyone else. You’re all over the place, you can’t sit still. You’re nervous. Distracted. You look like shit. And you’re miserable.” She looks at him expectantly.

He doesn’t know what to say; he shrugs.

She rolls her eyes. “I’ve worked for you for a long time,” she starts. “Have I ever steered you wrong?”

“Of course not, Laura, what-“

“Where’s that good-looking blond guy who was coming in here to see you?”

He freezes, staring at her dumbly.

“You were happier than I’ve ever seen you. You were taking time off for once in your life, you were dressing better, you came in with that love bite – don’t give me that look – and you know we all care about you, right? You and I have never talked about this, I respect your privacy, but we don’t care who you love, as long as you’re happy. And the way you’ve been the last couple of days, we’re worried about you.”

He clenches his hands behind his desk. “You’re discussing me with the rest of the staff?”

“Oh, come off it, Daniel,” she blurts angrily, then continues more softly, “talk to me.”

While she waits, he works through his thoughts. He trusts Laura, and as uncomfortable as this conversation is for him, she’s right, she’s never steered him wrong or given him any reason to question her loyalty. In truth, she’s the closest thing he has to a friend. She’s also sitting in a chair between him and the door – escape isn’t an option. He takes a deep breath.

“Johnny and I have been seeing each other, and… I guess it moved pretty quickly. It was going… really well.” He feels his face redden.

She’s trying to keep a straight face. “Ok, that sounds promising. What happened, did you have a fight?”

“No, we didn’t have a fight. I’m… avoiding him, I guess.”

“You changed your mind? You don’t like him and you don’t want to tell him?”

“No. I like him.” He says this quickly, without hesitation, and realizes how very true it is. When he stops avoiding thinking about Johnny, a confusing flood of emotions nearly overwhelms him; he has to force his face into a composed mask before he can continue. “I’m not sure what he could possibly see in me though.”

“You’re sabotaging it because you’re afraid.” 

It’s not even a question, which is good because he doesn’t have a satisfactory answer – what she said rings uncomfortably true. When things got intense… he ran. But now, from the safety of the distance he’s put between them, he realizes he misses him desperately.

“Well, stop it. I’m not surprised he likes you, you’re a total snack. You’re good looking, you’re funny, you run the best bar in the valley, you care about your people – don’t be stupid. Don’t screw it up, Daniel,” she raises her voice, “when something good comes along, you take it! Don’t you think you should have something for you?”

“Jesus, Laura-“ She’s never raised her voice at him before tonight.

“Shut up! I’m not done. You’re acting like a child. If you’re not into the guy, fine, but if you are… you can’t just pretend you never met him. You owe it to yourself to at least try.” She sits back in her chair, folds her arms, stares him down and waits.

He has no idea what to say. Worse, he’s now ruminating over how he would have felt if Johnny had cut off contact, cold, without warning or reason. He would have been devastated. He finally guts out, “I might have really screwed this up.”

She sighs, stands up, and opens her arms to him. When he also stands and accepts her hug, she holds onto him and tells him, “Talk to him. Tell him how you feel. Whatever happens, it’s better than not knowing. Right?”

“You’re a good friend. What would I do without you?”

“Probably revert to the wild. I’ll leave you to it.” She pats his back briskly and lets herself out of the office, closing the door behind her.

It’s 9:30. He picks up his phone and calls. It rings, is picked up at the other end, then disconnected. His second call goes straight to voicemail, as does his third. Only then does he read the texts. The last one, from 20 minutes ago, reads

> “I didnt expect this from you larusso. I thought we had something”

His gut sinks; he really _has_ screwed this up. He queasily navigates the rest of the night on autopilot, avoiding Laura’s curious glances, and tries to figure out what he should do next.

…

#### Saturday

Although he was working until 2am and awake until well after three, he sets his alarm for 8am and is out the door at 8:30, pointing the truck towards Johnny’s Santa Monica address. He stops on the way for two coffees to go. While he still has that knot in his gut reminding him what he’s up against, he’s determined to try. He at least wants Johnny to know… well, to know that when they were together, he meant it.

He knocks, waits, knocks some more, until finally, he hears footsteps approach and pause. After a few seconds that feel like an hour, Johnny jerks the door open.

“Hey,” Daniel says quietly.

He just looks at him for a long, uncomfortable moment, mouth tight and shoulders tensed. Then, without a word, he turns away and walks out onto his balcony, leaving the front door open. Daniel follows him, closing the condo’s door quietly behind him. They both sit and stare out at the surf.

“Johnny. I’m sorry.”

Johnny looks rough, he realizes. He’s wearing running shorts and a t-shirt that looks to be on its second or third wear, and he’s never seen him with two days’ stubble growth before. Johnny takes a deep breath, and turns to face him. His eyes are clear, blue, the lids swollen as though he slept badly.

“You shut me down. Why?”

“I don’t know. That’s not true. I got scared.” He’s scared right now.

“I don’t know what the fuck that means, you got scared. Of what? Of me?”

“Listen. I’m not good at this, okay? You’re all, I don’t know, sorted, put together. I’m a mess. I haven’t had any kind of a relationship since my ex-wife, and honestly, that wasn’t much of a re–“

“The last thing I want to hear about right now is your ex-anything, LaRusso. Was this just another fling to you? Get one over on the guy who kicked your ass in high school?”

He flinches at the bite in Johnny’s words. “No. Fuck. That’s not true.”

“You’re gonna have to explain this to me like I’m five. Why you would fuck me like it means something to you, and then ignore me for two days, unless you’re just fucking with me.”

Humiliatingly, Daniel feels tears well up in his eyes. What the fuck is wrong with him that he can’t maintain his composure long enough to get through one goddamned conversation? He blinks them back, hard, and looks away from Johnny, back to the water. But then, he feels Johnny take his hand firmly, and his breath hitches.

“Come on, Daniel.”

Holding Johnny’s hand tightly, he pulls himself together. “I can’t imagine what you see in me, Johnny. I live in the same shit apartments I did as a kid. I work in a bar, I sleep past noon, I eat like shit, I live paycheck to paycheck, it’s been thirty years and I can’t walk into your stupid dojo alone. I’m nothing like you. Honestly, you can do better.”

“Is that the shittiest sales pitch ever, or are you fishing for compliments?”

“Fuck you, Lawrence,” he retorts heatedly. Maybe he didn’t handle things as well as he should have, but he didn’t come here to be mocked; he tries to withdraw his hand but Johnny tightens his grip.

“Let me tell you what I see.” Johnny’s voice is rough, but warm. “You are the most persistent, stubborn little shit I’ve ever seen. It was true before and it’s true now. You never give up, even when you should; you’re either the most optimistic person I’ve ever met, or the dumbest . You don’t ‘work at a bar’, asshole, you own it. I’ve seen how you take care of the people who work for you, remember? We have a great time together, we like the same stuff, I know I make you laugh. Don’t tell me you don’t feel a physical connection, either, you’d be lying because you know I turn you on-“

“Oh my god,” Daniel groans, even as the knot in his gut is loosening, “stop-“

“I’m not done yet. I know I had an easy road compared to yours. Sid paid for my college education, gave me a car and all the other shit I wanted, you remember. When mom died, I got an inheritance that helped me buy this place. You didn’t have any of that, did you? Everything you’ve done has been completely on your own. I don’t think I could have done what you did. Give yourself some credit. Your people skills could use some work though. What the fuck, you can’t ghost a guy who gives you the kind of dicking I do, if you’re gonna dump me you have to do it in person.”

He laughs, embarrassed. “Johnny, please-“

“Yeah, that’s what _you_ said-“

Daniel jerks Johnny’s hand, the one he’s still holding, hard; Johnny stands and pulls harder, forcing Daniel to his feet, then against him, where they embrace. Daniel allows himself to melt into Johnny’s body; he missed this so badly.

“You ever pull this shit again, LaRusso, I’m kicking your ass. We talk this shit out. Don’t give me the silent treatment.”

“Ok,” Daniel agrees, muffled, into his neck. “Are we still going steady?”

“I’m in as long as you’re in. Was one of those coffees for me?”

Once they ramp down from their heightened emotional states and work their way through their coffees, Johnny tugs him into the kitchen and puts him to work cutting veggies and cracking eggs for brunch. As they prep, they’re both constantly touching each other as though instinctively making up for lost time. Johnny rests his hand on his lower back for a long moment; he hip-checks Johnny as he eases past him to the sink; Johnny presses his shoulder against his own; he presses against Johnny’s back, resting his chin on his shoulder, to watch him melt butter in the pan. 

Johnny finally cuts off the burner, turns to him, and pulls him in for a long kiss. “We’re either doing something about _this_ or we’re making breakfast, we can’t do both.”

Daniel contemplates his options – they could always eat later – and reluctantly opts for the conservative course. If he got freaked out by the intensity of the last week, he thinks, maybe the pleasant anticipation wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for him.

“Ok, ok, I’ll be good,” he promises. “But… tonight?” He grips the ends of Johnny’s hair and gives a little tug.

Johnny grins back at him. “Think you can handle it, LaRusso? I might be too much for you.”

“Oh, fuck you, Lawrence,” he says, this time without any anger, punctuating his retort by running his fingers down the back of Johnny’s neck. Johnny gives him a happy little sigh in return.

When they settle at Johnny’s dining table with their plates, Daniel tells him about the reporter who visited the bar Thursday evening looking for a human interest story.

“What are you going to do?” Johnny asks him with an artificial nonchalance. 

“I said no, obviously. Gave her the old parable, ‘The tallest blade of grass is the first to be cut by-’ _Ow!_ What the fuck?” Johnny just kicked him under the table, _hard_.

“What are you so afraid of? What’s the worst that could happen? Honestly, I think it would be good for you. Get you out of your shell a little bit.”

“Johnny, visibility means attention, bad things come of that.” It’s true, he thinks. Competing and winning drew abuse and blackmail, and he played right into it. Experimenting with the bounds of his marriage exposed his bisexuality which brought its own heartbreak. Then again, taking a risk and being open to something new brought him Johnny.

“If you keep doing what you’ve already done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten,” Johnny retorts, “but you do you.”

“I’ll think about it,” he replies mildly.

…

Daniel rolls into work earlier than usual. He’s in a much stronger state of mind than he’s been for the last few days, and in the last few hours between brunch with Johnny and a restorative nap at his own place, he’s come to some decisions. Now, it’s time to take action.

The first thing he does is find the reporter’s card, still on his desk, and call her. Although she doesn’t pick up, he leaves a voicemail. “Hi, Rebecca, this is Daniel LaRusso. I’ve changed my mind. If you’re still interested, text me.” He leaves his cellphone number.

The next thing he does is draft a post for their facebook page and the blog on the bar’s website, thanking his community for their support, and expressing appreciation for the flood of reviews and feedback. He closes by offering a 10% discount to customers who tell their waitstaff they kick ass. 

He fills the rest of the time until staff arrival at four getting a start on payroll for the current week and scheduling for the upcoming week. That’s going to be a little trickier than usual, but he’ll make it work.

By the time Laura arrives - she’s usually the first, aside from him – he’s waiting at the bar, and motions her into his office. She watches him with obvious curiosity while he closes the door behind them, but doesn’t ask what she’s clearly dying to ask. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he admires her restraint.

“I’d like to make some changes,” he explains. “How long have you worked here? Longer than I’ve owned the place.”

“Six years.” Now she’s looking at him with mild suspicion.

“Have you done scheduling?” “Yeah.” “Counted out the registers and squared the books?” “A few times, you usually want to do it though.” “Have you managed staff?” “You know I haven’t.”

“Do you want to?” 

“Daniel. Tell me what you’re getting at.”

He smiles at her for the first time. “I’m promoting you to manager, if you want the job. I’ll stay involved, be here regularly… but I’m going to take more time off. You’ve more than proven you can do the job, and I trust you. You’ll need to hire a backfill; I can guide you through all that.”

They study each other for a long minute over the desk. Laura’s younger, in her early thirties, but she carries herself with authority and confidence beyond her years, and her direct gray eyes meet his carefully. Whatever she sees, it seems to convince her he’s serious.

“All right, I’m interested, but we need to discuss salary and start date.” 

“See, you’re the woman for the job!” He grins and offers her a high five – which she returns. “You’d start as soon as we can come to mutually-agreeable terms, so, what do you have in mind?”

Her terms are agreeable, it turns out. They announce the change to the rest of the staff together a couple of hours later – just as his phone buzzes with a text from Rebecca.

>   
>  Rebecca: tonight? Ten minutes to set up, ten minutes to tape the segment  
>  Daniel: works for me  
> 

…

When Johnny drives up at 10, he notices a cameraman from the local news station packing his gear into a company van, and it makes him grin to himself. He wasn’t sure if LaRusso was going to soften his stance about the segment, and he finds himself oddly gratified that it seems he did. It’s about time he opened himself up a little, Johnny thinks.

When he enters the dark venue, he sees LaRusso well before LaRusso sees him, and he takes those moments to look at the man in his native habitat. He looks unusually relaxed where he stands at the far end of the bar, holding a beer and watching the crowd with a small, lopsided smile on his face. Johnny still feels emotionally raw from the stress of the last few days, and from his own recitation this morning of all the things he loves about Daniel – although he meant every word of it, he’s never said anything like that aloud to another person – and he finds himself hanging back a little, delaying.

Laura spots him and heads his direction; he steels himself because their last interaction consisted of her admonishing him not to fuck with LaRusso – there’s a rule he’s broken spectacularly - but her welcome tonight is warm. She even pats his upper arm congenially. “Johnny, right? It’s good to see you here. Can I get you a dirty martini?”

He returns her smile with a relieved one of her own. “Laura, hey, thank you. I’d love one.” Encouraged, he approaches Daniel.

“Hey there.” Daniel smiles unguardedly, and the reappearance of the little laugh lines around his eyes, the only lines he seems to have picked up over the years, sends a little flutter through his chest. Then Daniel rests his hand on Johnny’s lower back; the open show of affection surprises him, and he wonders if this touch means Daniel is laying claim to him - marking him as _his_. “Get you anything?”

“Laura already -“

“Gentlemen,” Laura announces, appearing as though summoned to hand Johnny a martini glass adorned with three olives on a little cocktail umbrella. Johnny watches her wink at Daniel, who looks at him, blushes and grins. _Well._ Johnny raises an inquiring eyebrow at them both.

“Johnny,” Daniel announces with a little flourish, “meet the new manager of The Boardroom, Laura. Laura, meet… well, you know Johnny.”

“Yeah, I know Johnny,” she rolls her eyes, but she's also smiling. “We have everything under control here. You should get out of here early tonight.”

“Maybe we will,” Daniel agrees – and she gives him a quick side-hug.

After she leaves, Johnny looks at Daniel with both eyebrows raised. “Making some changes? What was that all about?” He raises the martini to eye level, inspecting the ridiculous umbrella.

“It was time,” Daniel replies without further explanation, his expression smug. “Speaking of… are we still on for tomorrow?”

Oh, the demo for the older class. “LaRusso, I don’t want to put that pressure on you. We can do that any time.”

Daniel presses their shoulders together – to Johnny, that never gets old – and murmurs, just for him, “I’m feeling better about the dojo after we defiled it the other day.”

“I might have said ‘christened’,” Johnny counters drily.

“Sullied?”

“Enjoyed…”

“Broke it in.”

Johnny groans. “Seriously?” 

“I’m a little slow, but I figured it out,” Daniel says with quiet surety. “Cobra Kai isn’t Kreese’s any more, and it’s not Terry’s. It’s all yours. It’s a new thing. Johnny, I’m ok.”

Johnny downs his martini and offers Daniel the olives while he surreptitiously slides a $20 to the bartender behind him. “Let’s blow this joint.”

They leave the Audi behind the bar and Daniel drives them both to his place in the Tacoma, leading Johnny by the hand to his front door as though it’s his first time there. Once inside, Daniel pulls him firmly to the bedroom, kicking off his shoes and stripping off his jacket on the way; Johnny does the same, closing the door behind them. He watches Daniel to see what he’ll do next.

“I missed you,” Daniel tells him. He steps close and pulls Johnny’s shirt over his head.

“It was only a couple of days,” Johnny hedges, resting his wrists lightly on Daniel’s shoulders.

“It felt like longer. Don’t minimize it.” He unfastens Johnny’s jeans and lets them drop; Johnny steps out of them and toes off his socks, feeling very much at Daniel’s mercy. He moves his hands to the nape of Daniel’s neck, then up into his hairline, and Daniel sighs and closes his eyes in response.

Johnny pauses his ministrations just long enough to remove Daniel’s shirt. He thumbs his upper arm, noting the cut is mostly healed, then runs his hands over both of Daniel’s shoulders, down his arms and to his wrists. “It felt like longer,” he agrees, unbuttons Daniel’s trousers, and leads them both to the bed. 

They come together tenderly enough, but it’s not long before the urges held over from that morning boil over and they’re breathlessly wrestling for position and leverage. Somewhere in the playful melee, Daniel presses a few fingers over Johnny’s entrance; Johnny arches and can’t hold back a giggle.

“I don’t know about this, LaRusso…”

“How do you know if you don’t try it,” he teases.

“I can’t believe you just said that,” Johnny laughs, though he can’t argue his point. What the hell, he’ll try anything once. “Get the lube.”

Daniel starts with one well-lubricated finger, and once past the surprise of the unaccustomed intrusion, Johnny can’t imagine what he’s fishing around for back there until _\- holy shit, what was that -_ and he can’t restrain his cry.

“There you are, you’re going to like this,” Daniel murmurs, adding a second finger. He had Johnny half-pinned on his side; now he settles in closely behind him, and Johnny feels him press his face against his neck as he continues to work at that spot with his fingers. Johnny’s eyes are about to roll into the back of his head from the stimulation; he spasms, grabbing a pillow with one hand while reaching back for Daniel’s thigh with the other. “Fuck, Daniel, please-“ 

He briefly teases him with a third finger, then pulls them out – Johnny feels a brief, aching emptiness – and pushes his full length into him firmly. He hits that same oversensitive spot with his every thrust, and Johnny finds himself moaning uncontrollably. Daniel’s moaning right along with him, and he feels like he’s going to explode at any moment, but Daniel beats him to it, thrusting deeply into him through his orgasm. Out of breath, Daniel takes hold of Johnny’s painfully-hard cock and strokes him until he follows him over the edge.

He holds Johnny as he shudders through the aftershocks, kissing his shoulders and the back of his neck. “Told you you were going to like that,” he murmurs.

Johnny rolls over to face him. “I’m not sure what that was-“

“It was your prostate, Johnny,” Daniel archly informs him.

“-but it was really good.” He wraps his arms around Daniel tenderly, fully intending not to let him go until morning. They hold each other, legs intertwined, lightly discussing day to day things until they both drift off to sleep.

…

#### Sunday

They linger together through the morning in a warm, comfortable haze, delaying their return to the outside world. Just after noon, they finally force themselves to leave the apartment, intending to drop Johnny by his car so he can drive to his condo and pick up his gi for the afternoon class sessions. They run into Carmen in the courtyard; this is the first time Daniel has seen her in nearly a week, and he feels a moment of uncertainty – Carmen has never seen him bring anyone home of any variety, and he has no idea what her views are on _this_ – until he notices Carmen’s easy smile.

“Good morning,” he greets. 

“Good afternoon,” she retorts with an amused little smirk, looking them both up and down. “We should have drinks sometime, catch up.” Her casual invitation encompasses them both.

“Johnny, this is my neighbor and Miguel’s mom, Carmen. Carmen, this is Johnny, my, uh-”

“Oho, how are you going to introduce me,” Johnny teases, _highly_ amused by the situation. “Think fast-“

“-boyfriend,” he finishes declaratively, raising a challenging eyebrow at Johnny.

“Not bad,” he acknowledges, pleased.

“We’d like that,” Daniel replies to Carmen for them both.

“It’s a date,” she confirms. “See you later, Daniel.” There’s a note in her voice that tells Daniel he’s in for a grilling later, and this, of all things, raises a flush to his face and neck.

Daniel meets Johnny later, at the dojo, between the youth class and the older class. He no longer owns a gi, opting instead for loose athletic pants and a short-sleeved t-shirt; when Johnny looks him over appreciatively, head to toe, he swats his arm. “Keep it clean, Lawrence,” he admonishes, “these are impressionable young minds here.”

“Asshole,” Johnny retorts fondly.

They work a low-key demonstration into Johnny’s usual lesson, and he’s pretty sure they avoid any appearance of impropriety; surely no one notices the occasional touch that lingers an extra moment, or eye contact deeper than one would expect between colleagues. Afterwards, Johnny pairs up his students to practice a few of the newer moves together. They divide and conquer, and Johnny’s gratified to see Daniel far more at ease with his young Cobras than he himself had expected him to be.

Later, after all of the parents and students have filtered out, Johnny corners Daniel in his office. “How did that feel?” he asks curiously.

“It felt good,” Daniel acknowledges, and as he says it he realizes he means it. He felt at home, which shocked him, and it felt like an accomplishment every time he got to watch a student have an ‘a-ha’ moment. He himself enjoyed the ritual and discipline – it reminded him of Miyagi and the calm order he brought to everything he did. Johnny’s a little bit like that, he realizes, focused and disciplined in a way Daniel himself was never able to master.

“Maybe we can do something like that again,” he suggests, “when that feels right.”

“Maybe,” Daniel says noncommittally; inside, he’s warming to the thought. He’ll have to think about that more in upcoming days.

…

#### Days later

After the brief local news segment runs Monday evening, Daniel sees a nice spike in business that continues through the week, the volume more than offsetting the 10% ‘kick ass’ discount he and Laura still offer. Laura is ramping up quickly; they interview candidates for her backfill together, and another happy side effect of their fifteen minutes of fame is the number and caliber of applicants they have to work with.

Johnny and Daniel haven’t spent a night apart since their reunion, and don’t intend to if they can help it. Daniel’s new work-hours flexibility makes it easier for them to spend daylight hours together as well as their nights; they work through all the little day-to-day points of coordination and contention – who drives, who pushes the grocery cart, how do they refer to each other in situations where they’re out and where they’re not – and it’s all coming together in a way neither of them could have predicted or hoped for even two weeks before.

A surprise comes late Saturday afternoon in the form of an unusual phone call from Laura at the bar. “Daniel, there’s someone here to see you,” she says, and there’s an odd note in her voice. “He won’t tell me who he is – just says he saw you on TV, and he wants to wait.”

“Does he seem, I don’t know, threatening?” Daniel asks, a little bit at a loss. Johnny’s ears perk up at the question and he stares from his seat on Daniel’s sofa, listening to his side of the conversation with a laser focus.

“This guy? No, I don’t think so.” On this point, she sounds confident. “I have him sitting in your booth. I don’t think he’s going anywhere.”

Daniel shrugs at Johnny. “We’ll head that way,” he promises, and hangs up.

“What was that about?”

“You know as much as I do,” Daniel tells him, mystified and, Johnny can see, intrigued. “Come with me?”

“Sure.”

Daniel goes ahead and dresses for the worknight; Johnny stubbornly sticks with his jeans and t-shirt for the short drive over, and they hold hands as they enter through the bar’s back door. Laura meets them at the door from the kitchen to the bar floor.

“You’re ok?” Johnny asks her while Daniel peers curiously through the door’s round window.

“Of course,” she assures them both. “I didn’t mean to freak you out. I’m sure he’s harmless. It was just… odd. Honestly I wasn’t sure whether to bother Daniel for this.”

“Well, I can’t see anything,” Daniel says, and pushes through the door without further comment or delay. Johnny follows him, a pace behind, and has a front row seat to Daniel’s reaction when he sees who’s waiting for him. They both freeze in shock.

“Mr Miyagi,” Daniel breathes. Johnny chooses this moment to rest a reassuring hand on Daniel’s midback; he feels Daniel lean into him.

“Daniel-san,” the old man greets and stands, surprisingly spry for a man who must be past ninety, his arms open, and if he’s surprised by Johnny’s presence, if he recognizes Johnny at all, he hides it well. “It’s been too long since we talked.”

Daniel steps into the smaller man’s embrace; his shoulders shake, and Johnny keeps his hand on his back for support. “I’ll be damned,” Johnny mutters, and grins.


End file.
